Thousands of local and foreign observers will look on when Bulgarians cast ballots Sunday in the country's first free elections in 58 years.
The parliamentary vote pits the leadership of the old Communist Party, now renamed the Socialist Party, against an opposition coalition called the Union of Democratic Forces, which wants a swift move to a Western-style market economy.The government on Saturday night announced a ban on all exit polls and the circulation of any information about the election results before the official announcement by the Central Electoral Commission, the state news agency BTA reported.
The commission, acting on a protest from the main opposition alliance, on Thursday banned an exit poll to be conducted by the West German Infas institute with Bulgarian partners.
The race includes the Socialists and 36 other parties vying for the 400 seats in the Grand National Assembly. Only one other party, the Bulgarian Agrarian Party, is expected to win a significant number of votes.
Almost 6.5 million of the nearly 9 million Bulgarians are eligible to vote in the first multiparty elections since 1932.
Official pre-election surveys have given the ruling Socialists - heirs to four decades of totalitarian rule - a commanding lead of between 42 percent and 49 percent.
The same polls have shown the Union of Democratic Forces a distant second with 21 percent to 28 percent of the vote and the mainstream Agrarian Party third with 10 percent to 15 percent.
Half the seats in Parliament will be decided by direct vote and half by proportional representation. Parties must get a minimum of 4 percent of the vote to win any seats in Parliament.
A runoff election is scheduled on June 17 for races in which no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote.