Mayors have been elected in seven of Bulgaria's largest municipalities, Central Electoral Commission (CEC) spokesman Alexander Alexandrov announced Monday. Re-elected with outright majorities at the first round of voting on Sunday have been the mayors of Sofia (Boyko Borisov of GERB), Varna (Kiril Yordanov, independent), Pleven (Naiden Zelenogorski of UDF), Dobrich (Detelina Nikolova of GERB), Montana (Zlatko Zhivkov, independent) and Kurdjali (Hasan Azis Ismail of MRF), while in Plovdiv new mayor Slavcho Atanasov was elected on a joint
GERB-IMRO platform. Later in the day CEC Spokesman Bisser Troyanov said that Dora Yankova was also re-elected as Smolyan Mayor in the first round, BTA reports.

All other major municipalities will proceed to runoff elections next Sunday, Alexandrov said, but added that in some municipalities not all votes have been counted. There will probably not be a definitive result on Monday, as only 18 of a total of 264 electoral protocols had been submitted to the CEC at close of counting late on Sunday night, the rest expected within the next two days with the deadline for submission being 8 pm on Tuesday.

Voter turnout was 42.4 per cent nationwide, with urns closing as scheduled in all municipalities.

Run-off election will be held in all other regional centres on November 4. The two candidates having garnered the highest number of votes will run in the second round of voting.

This is the first time in 12 years that borough mayors are elected by direct suffrage, Spokesman Alexandrov further said. The question is about a total of 24 boroughs in Sofia, 6 in Plovdiv and 5 in Varna. According to the results, based on slightly less than 90 per cent of the protocols, mayors will be elected already in the first round in the Trakiya Borough of Plovdiv and Iskur Borough of Sofia.