Massive anti-graft protests last year sapped support for conservative Boyko Borisov, who long headed the poor Balkan nation with the EU’s lowest Covid vaccination rate and one of the world’s highest pandemic death rates.
“I wish the elections are successful this time so that we have a new government for a better life,” pensioner Stanka Lenkova, 73, said at a polling station on the outskirts of Sofia.
Polling stations are scheduled to close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) when the first exit polls are expected to be published.
Turnout at 4:00 pm reached slightly more than 25 percent, according to the Election Commission, compared to some 27% at that hour during the last elections in July.
Many have said they are disheartened by parties’ failure to cobble together a workable coalition after votes in April and July returned fractured parliaments.
Analysts have said they expect parties to try hard to form a government to end the worst political crisis since the fall of…