The high number of Bulgarians living abroad compared to the country’s relatively small population size, and the fact that remittances sent back to Bulgaria account for the largest source of foreign direct investment, make Bulgaria stand out when considering voting from abroad. The topic has received much domestic media attention, noting that a small ethnic party—the Movement for Rights and Freedom (MRF)—has been the beneficiary of the foreign vote in the majority of elections in the post-communist period. However, little is known about the political debate surrounding the foreign vote, the strategic choices (or lack thereof) made by individual parties, or the effect this has had on the Bulgarian party system. This article explores regulations for political parties operating abroad and their realization of the diaspora’s electoral potential. It shows that, until recently, the tactic of mobilizing Bulgarian citizens abroad has not been widely used by parties except the MRF.Footnote ¹ The article argues that the mobilization of Bulgarian citizens abroad provides a large but so far untapped opportunity, especially for small and new political parties.

The global movement of people has stimulated a new area of activity for political parties outside of the realm of traditional nationally bound party politics (Kernalegenn and Van Haute Reference Kernalegenn and Van Haute2020; Rashkova and van der Staak Reference Rashkova and van der Staak2020). Bulgaria is no exception. Statistics on the number of Bulgarians living abroad vary between 900,000 and 2 million; however, 1.3 million is a reliable figure (Ivanova Reference Ivanova2019). Table 1 illustrates that the electoral activity of expatriates is quite low. At the same time, the Bulgarian diaspora is the largest foreign investor in the country, having sent more than €1 billion in remittances in 2018 (Detev Reference Detev2019). This suggests that Bulgarians abroad still remain attached to their home country. Given the diaspora’s size (i.e., 1.3 million) in proportion to the country’s population (i.e., 7 million), there seems to be a significant yet untapped political potential in this vote.

Table 1

Voting from Abroad

Source: http://portal.cik.bg.

Notes: *Total number votes cast abroad for the given parliamentary election (excludes empty or invalid ballots) and the percentage of national validly cast votes. Names of parties: GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria), MRF, Democratic Bulgaria (a three-party union – Yes, Bulgaria, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, Greens).

To elect its members of parliament, Bulgaria uses a proportional representation system in 31 multimember districts with an electoral threshold of 4%. The vote from abroad is collected in a separate “abroad” category. All Bulgarian citizens abroad older than 18 are eligible to vote in national elections. There are no restrictions to the term in which they can exercise this right and, although preregistration is recommended, it is not compulsory. Voting takes place in polling stations abroad where citizens with a valid national ID can register on Election Day and cast their vote. According to the Bulgarian Election Code, Article 297.2, the vote from abroad is counted toward the national overall vote for each party (Rashkova Reference Rashkova2015; Reference Rashkova2020), and only those parties that receive more than 4% of the total vote can take part in the seat distribution. Thus, the vote from abroad raises the threshold that parties need to exceed, which advantages small parties. Relative to its vote size, a small party has a larger marginal benefit from attracting votes from abroad than bigger parties, which already have sizeable support at home.

Given these relaxed rules, two factors affect the extent to which this voting potential is utilized: the mobilizing efforts of political parties and the “cost of voting.” The latter depends primarily on access to polling stations—how easy it is to get to a polling station and how busy it is. The number of polling stations, therefore, is one crucial factor for collecting a large portion of the vote from abroad. Table 1 illustrates that the MRF has been most strategic in this respect by opening the most polling stations in Turkey. A survey of the websites of Bulgarian parliamentary parties (i.e., GERB, Bulgarian Socialist Party, MRF, and ATAKA) and a few known yet out-of-parliament parties (i.e., Democrats for Strong Bulgaria and Yes, Bulgaria) reveals that parties’ websites do not engage with the electorate abroad. Their social media accounts also lack connections with the Bulgarian diaspora. The only exception is the MRF, which displays its web content in Bulgarian, English, and Turkish. Table 1 shows that the MRF has been the beneficiary of the vote from abroad in three of the four most recent parliamentary elections. Furthermore, it has been a beneficiary by a significant margin. This prompts the question: What has the Turkish minority party considered that other parties seem to have missed?

Since the democratic transition, the MRF has secured approximately 10% of the vote. Through this, it has been a (necessary) partner to almost every cabinet formed in the first 15 years of the transition. The MRF’s electoral success as well as the ideological flexibility observed in its cabinet-formation talks fostered strong political opposition and attracted media attention to the phenomenon of “electoral tourism.” This refers to the practice of Bulgarian Turks being transported from Turkey to specific electoral constituencies in Bulgaria to cast a vote, after already casting a vote in electoral stations opened abroad. Although concrete evidence for this electoral fraud is scarce, the high number of polling stations opened in Turkey and the resulting electoral gains for the MRF prompted changes in the Electoral Code (EC). The rules for setting up polling stations abroad set a maximum of 35 stations per country; however, after popular discontent that this would limit the ability to mobilize the more dispersed diaspora across Western Europe, the measure was dropped for countries in the European Union (EU) (Angelov Reference Angelov2016).

However, the effect of these changes in the EC resulted in fewer polling stations in Turkey (outside of the EU) in the 2017 parliamentary election and a different party winning the vote from abroad. Although succeeding in stopping the MRF’s winning streak, Bulgarian politicians have yet to increase the turnout of the Bulgarian voters abroad. Furthermore, smaller parties—which could benefit from garnering more support from abroad—have yet to adopt strategies for engaging with and mobilizing Bulgarians living abroad. Given the multiple social protests that the country has seen in the past seven years—both at home and abroad—and the EU’s position on the insufficient action against corruption and the lack of judicial independence that the current political elite sustains, the electoral potential of the vote from abroad provides significant power and opportunity to those who are ready to seize it. We can only hope that the victory of the most traditional liberal political formation in Bulgaria—that is, Democratic Bulgaria—aided by the vote from abroad in the latest election held (i.e., for the European Parliament in 2019) signals the awakening of Bulgaria’s political parties to the electoral potential of their compatriots abroad.