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| Turnout | 44.11% (first round) 2.48pp42.62% (second round)  12.30pp | |||||||||||||||||||
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Presidential elections were held inBulgaria on 22 October 2006, as decided on 27 July 2006 by theBulgarian Parliament.[1] The runoff took place on 29 October 2006, while theelectoral campaign spanned 19 September – 20 October. At the election,Georgi Parvanov won his second and final term asPresident of Bulgaria.
Some of theright-wing parties were disunited at the time but still chose to support a common candidate,Nedelcho Beronov.Prime minister and head of theSocialist PartySergey Stanishev expressed his strong support for the current president, Georgi Parvanov, in July 2006,[2] and Parvanov officially stated his desire to run for a second term on 25 August 2006.[3] He was also backed by the other two members of the then rulingTriple coalition –NDSV andDPS.
In the first round, incumbent Georgi Parvanov received 64% of the vote, ahead ofnationalist leaderVolen Siderov who came second with 21.5%.[4] However, Parvanov was forced into a runoff with Siderov, as Bulgarian law requires aturnout of 50% for a president to be elected in the first round.[5] Turnout for the first round was 44%. The defeatedright-wing forces called for abstention, while somefar-left formations[citation needed] expressed their support for Siderov.
The second round saw Parvanov win a decisive victory with 75.9% as opposed to Siderov's 24.1%,[6] meaning that Parvanov became the first person to be democratically re-elected as President of Bulgaria.[7] Second round turnout was 43%.
| Candidate | Running mate | Party | First round | Second round | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | ||||
| Georgi Parvanov | Angel Marin | Bulgarian Socialist Party | 1,780,119 | 64.05 | 2,050,488 | 75.95 | |
| Volen Siderov | Pavel Shopov [bg] | Attack | 597,175 | 21.49 | 649,387 | 24.05 | |
| Nedelcho Beronov | Yuliana Nikolova | Union of Democratic Forces | 271,078 | 9.75 | |||
| Georgi Markov [bg] | Maria Ivanova | Order, Law and Justice | 75,478 | 2.72 | |||
| Petar Beron | Stela Bankova | Independent | 21,812 | 0.78 | |||
| Grigor Velev [bg] | Iordan Mutafchev | Аll in One Bulgaria | 19,857 | 0.71 | |||
| Lyuben Petrov [bg] | Neli Topalova | Independent | 13,854 | 0.50 | |||
| Total | 2,779,373 | 100.00 | 2,699,875 | 100.00 | |||
| Valid votes | 2,779,373 | 97.29 | 2,699,875 | 97.91 | |||
| Invalid/blank votes | 77,374 | 2.71 | 57,560 | 2.09 | |||
| Total votes | 2,856,747 | 100.00 | 2,757,435 | 100.00 | |||
| Registered voters/turnout | 6,477,126 | 44.11 | 6,469,224 | 42.62 | |||
| Source:Electoral Commission of Bulgaria | |||||||
