Iliana Iotova, Bulgaria’s incumbent head of state, won the country’s presidential runoff on Sunday, Nov. 1, according to parallel counts from the polling agencies registered to follow the vote, as the state news agency BTA reported them. Her challenger, Andrey Gyurov, said he accepts the results, BTA reported. The Central Election Commission’s partial tally points the same way: with 17.39% of polling-station protocols processed as of 11 p.m. local time, 1 p.m. PT, it showed Iotova with 182,002 votes (57.943%), Gyurov with 122,522 (39.007%), and 9,581 (3.050%) for the option of supporting no one, according to the CEC results page this desk read at about 1:13 p.m. PT. Bulgarian outlets spell the names Iotova or Yotova and Gyurov or Gurov; this story uses Iotova and Gyurov except inside quotes.

The counts. A parallel count tallies votes from a sample of polling-station protocols, unlike an exit poll, which asks voters how they voted. Trend gave the Iotova–Valchev ticket 58.1% and the Gyurov–Kandev ticket 38.9%; Alpha Research 57.4% to 39.6%; Myara 58.2% to 38.6%; and Gallup International Balkan 56.1% to 39.1%, all on 100% of their samples, according to BTA. The state agency posted the Myara, Trend and Alpha Research figures on X at 11:13 a.m. PT (@BTAnewsBG). BNT reported the same Alpha Research count and said about 3% of voters chose the ballot option “I do not support any candidate.” The Sofia Globe describes Iotova’s running mate, Kiril Valchev, as “BTA chief.” Because this story leans on BTA, the desk checked its figures against BNT and the agencies’ own posts; where they overlap, they match.

BTA’s English list also includes a Market Links count of 56.5% to 40.6%, but with the candidates in the reverse order from every other agency. Europe Elects, an account that tracks election data, posted the Market Links count at 11:03 a.m. PT as 56.6% for Iotova and 40.6% for Gyurov. This desk could not check the Market Links figure against the agency itself and leaves it out of the ranges above.

The counts gave Iotova a far wider lead than the exit polls released as voting ended, which put her ahead by about six to nine points, between 50.7% and 52.5%, according to BTA. Alpha Research estimated turnout at 29.1%, about 1.92 million voters, by 8 p.m. local time, according to BNT, and Myara estimated 27%, BNT reported. The CEC’s own last published figure, 19.33% at 4 p.m., came to 1,282,848 voters at home and abroad, according to BTA.

What the winner said. In her first statement after the polls closed, Iotova thanked voters and Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria party. “Dear Mr Radev, we would not have done it without you,” she said, according to BNT. She also thanked people who did not back her ticket. “Their vote means a lot, because we will listen to what they have told us,” she said, according to BTA. Iotova told reporters that Gyurov had called to congratulate her, BNT reported.

Iotova also criticized her opponent’s campaign. “We ran a positive campaign,” she said. “I cannot explain who misled Mr Andrey Gurov into waging this attack campaign against our presidential ticket,” she added, according to BTA. The Gyurov campaign had not answered that remark in the reports this desk read; on election morning Gyurov described his own effort as “a very positive, dignified and open campaign,” according to BNT.

Radev, who attended the briefing, said: “Today, the Bulgarian people have chosen the future over the past, peace, stability, normality, and a sustainable and clear outlook,” according to BTA. In BNT’s version of his remarks, Radev added that “there is no going back to cobbled-together coalitions or to the shadows of the past from the transition period.”

What the runner-up said. Gyurov said the campaign may have ended, but responsibility has not. “We must hold the State accountable, because it should work for Bulgarian citizens, not for itself,” he said, according to BTA. He thanked voters on both sides, his family, Kandev, his initiative committee and the parties that backed him. Kandev congratulated the winners and said the fight does not end with this election. “We saw people’s hopes, their aspirations and the difficulties they live with,” Kandev said, according to BTA. “I want to call on the Bulgarian people to remain vigilant as to whether all the promises made to them are kept, and to uphold the law and hold those promises to account,” he added.

Watch: the winner’s and the runner-up’s statements, via @sofiagrad on X

If an embed does not load, it shows as a plain link to the original post. Both clips carry Bulgarian speech without English subtitles, and both show the BTA logo.

@sofiagrad on X, Nov. 1 (12:49 p.m. PT): a photo and two clips, about 4 minutes 7 seconds and 1 minute 23 seconds, from Iliana Iotova’s first briefing after the polls closed. This desk viewed stills from the clips before embedding. Footage carries the BTA logo · original post
@sofiagrad on X, Nov. 1 (1:00 p.m. PT): a clip of about 3 minutes 59 seconds in which Andrey Gyurov, with Georgi Kandev beside him, says he accepts the results. This desk viewed a still from the clip before embedding. Footage carries the BTA logo · original post
AI B-roll (Grok Imagine) · AI-generated · Seems News · not real footage. A six-second silent clip that Seems News made with Grok Imagine: a slow push-in on a clear ballot box holding folded blank papers, on a wooden table in an empty room at dusk, with a white, green and red flag in soft focus by the window. No camera recorded it; it depicts no real person and no real polling station, and it does not show the Nov. 1 vote or any ballot cast in it. For real images, see the lead photo and the @sofiagrad X videos above.

Other reactions. Prime Minister Rumen Radev called Iotova a worthy president. “We have known each other for ten years,” he said, according to BTA. Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said police received more than 500 reports of violations and that “the result now being recorded in the election documents has not been influenced in any way” by vote-buying, according to BTA. Continue the Change chair Assen Vassilev, whose party backed Gyurov, called the vote a “red card” for the government over prices, incomes and oligarchic influence, BTA reported. Vassilev said Gyurov appeared to draw roughly twice the 400,000 or so votes Continue the Change won in the parliamentary election, while exit-poll estimates of 900,000 to 1 million votes for Iotova would mean about 800,000 fewer than the nearly 1.8 million won by the parties behind her, according to BTA and BNT. Alexandrina Pendachanska, co-chair of Gyurov’s initiative committee, said the gap “is nowhere near as significant as it was at the beginning” of the campaign, according to BTA. Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov said his party’s voters determined the result, BTA reported.

How the race looked a week ago. In the Oct. 25 first round, Iotova took 528,951 valid votes and Gyurov 486,232, out of 1,525,034 people who voted, according to the CEC as reported by BTA. In percentage terms she finished with 34.76% and he with 31.95%, according to The Sofia Globe; the CEC list BTA published shows 27 tickets in that round. First-round turnout ended at 22.98%, the lowest in any national election since Bulgaria became a democracy, the Sofia Globe reports. Seems News covered the first round here.

Who backed whom. Iotova ran with the endorsement of Radev’s ruling Progressive Bulgaria, and Gyurov, a former caretaker prime minister, with the backing of the pro-Western opposition groups We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria, according to The Sofia Globe. On Oct. 30, former prime ministers Boiko Borissov, Ivan Kostov and Nikolai Denkov, former president Rossen Plevneliev and Sofia mayor Vassil Terziev signed an open letter that endorsed Gyurov, the Sofia Globe reported. The letter argued that “the president and the government continue to underestimate the threat” from Russia. Borissov said on Sunday that “with such low voter turnout and such a lack of representativeness, whoever becomes president will find it very difficult afterwards to unite the nation,” according to BNT.

Security in the Black Sea, where drones struck merchant ships off Bulgaria’s coast in October, according to earlier Seems News reporting, ran through the campaign. Iotova proposed a forum of the six Black Sea countries — Bulgaria, Romania, Türkiye, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia — to seek a moratorium on hostilities, her press office said on Oct. 30, according to BTA. Seems News covered one of the drone strikes here.

What happens next. The CEC must announce the final result within three days of the vote and publish it in the State Gazette within seven, according to BTA. Parallel counts rest on samples, and the CEC’s partial tally covers fewer than one in five protocols; either can differ from the final official result. Radev said the draft 2027 state budget would go to parliament in the coming days, according to BTA. “The budget is obviously going to hit all of us,” Pendachanska predicted, according to BTA, and Vassilev said that if it proved harmful, the opposition should seek amendments through parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means, BTA reported.

Seems News could not reach either campaign for this report and relies on the outlets named above. Quotes appear as BTA and BNT published them in English; where the two agencies rendered the same remark differently, this story names which version it quotes.