This is the official result, not the exit poll. That distinction is the reason this article exists, and readers who followed the Bulgarian presidential runoff through its first, exit-poll-only reports should read what follows as the confirmed outcome. With all votes counted on Monday 2 November, Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission said acting president Iliana Iotova secured 57.6 percent of the vote against pro-Western challenger Andrey Gyurov’s 39.5 percent in the 1 November presidential runoff. Iotova thereby becomes the country’s first elected female head of state. An earlier report on this site carried exit polls only, with the winner explicitly not proclaimed. Now the commission has spoken, the count is complete, and the result can be stated as fact rather than forecast.
The numbers behind the headline deserve precision, because different outlets reported slightly different figures as the count approached completion. Near-final counts varied: 57.58 percent against 39.47 percent at 99.95 percent of protocols, 57.57 percent against 39.48 percent according to broadcaster BNT, and 57.5 percent against 39.4 percent in the rounded figures of the dpa news agency. This article uses the Central Election Commission’s final figures, 57.6 percent and 39.5 percent, and notes the rounding so readers are not confused by small differences elsewhere. The vote totals tell the same story in absolute terms. The Iotova-Valchev ticket won about 1.1 million ballots, 1,091,206 by the commission’s count. The Gyurov-Kandev ticket won about 749,500 ballots, with counts ranging from 745,303 to 749,500 by outlet. About 2.95 percent of voters chose the option “I support no one,” a reminder that a meaningful slice of the electorate turned up and declined both candidates.
Gyurov conceded defeat, saying “this is how the Bulgarian citizens have voted” and that the results had to be accepted as they stood. Concessions are sometimes treated as formalities, but in a runoff shaped by sharp political divides, a clean concession matters. It closes the contest without a dispute over the count, and it allows the conversation to move from who won to what the win means. Iotova, 61, said she will work for national consensus by bridging political rifts. That is a promise every winning candidate makes in some form, but in Bulgaria’s current political climate, where the presidency and the government are now aligned under the same governing camp, the language of consensus will be tested quickly against the reality of governing.
Iotova is the incumbent and acting president. She took over in January 2026 when Rumen Radev resigned to enter parliamentary politics and became prime minister. Her running mate is Kiril Valchev. Gyurov’s running mate is Georgi Kandev. Those biographical facts matter because they explain why this election felt, to many Bulgarians, less like a choice between two outsiders than like a referendum on the country’s current direction. Iotova was not a newcomer asking voters to imagine her in office. She was already in the office, asking voters to confirm her there. Gyurov, the liberal, pro-Western opposition candidate and former caretaker prime minister, offered the alternative: a presidency positioned as a check on, rather than an extension of, the governing camp.
Bulgaria election results: what Iotova’s runoff win means
The vote was the first major test for Prime Minister Rumen Radev’s Moscow-friendly Progressive Bulgaria party, which endorsed Iotova. In April’s parliamentary vote the party won 131 of 240 seats, an outright majority. The presidential runoff therefore completes a picture in which the same political camp holds both the government and, now, the elected presidency. Supporters present the win as a mandate for consensus and for that governing camp holding both institutions. Critics and analysts note the low-turnout caveat and the divide between the Moscow-friendly and pro-Western camps. The characterisation of Radev’s party as “Moscow-friendly” is the outlets’ description, not a proven policy label for Iotova herself, and this article keeps it attributed for that reason. Iotova has also been described as wanting talks with Moscow, which is a different and softer claim than alignment, and readers should not collapse the two.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Iotova on X and said she looked forward to cooperation on security and defence, competitiveness and energy independence. That message is diplomatic routine, but its substance is worth noting. Security and defence, competitiveness and energy independence are the three areas where Bulgaria’s relationship with the European Union is most consequential, and where a president’s tone — even in a largely ceremonial office — can shape how Sofia is heard in Brussels. Von der Leyen’s congratulation does not signal agreement with Iotova’s politics. It signals that the European Commission intends to work with the elected president whoever she is, and that the agenda for that work is already set.
The presidency in Bulgaria is largely ceremonial, and that constitutional fact should temper any reading of the result as a revolution. The president does not run the government day to day. The prime minister does. Iotova is due to take office and be inaugurated on 22 January. What the presidency does offer is a platform: a voice in foreign policy debates, a role in moments of political crisis, and a symbol of national unity or division depending on how the office is used. Iotova’s promise to bridge political rifts will therefore be judged less by legislation, which she does not control, than by how she uses that platform in the months after January.
Bulgaria presidential runoff turnout: only about one voter in six chose Iotova
The most striking figure in this election is not the winning margin. It is the turnout. Turnout was low, around 27 percent, with some reports projecting 27 to 29 percent, against about 22 percent in the first round — itself a record low. Iotova’s 1,091,206 votes against an electoral roll of 6,637,274 amount to roughly one voter in six. That arithmetic does not diminish the legitimacy of the result. In a democratic election, the votes cast decide the outcome, and Iotova won those votes by a margin of more than 18 percentage points. But it does change how the result should be described. A victory won on a 27 percent turnout is a mandate from those who voted, not a mobilisation of the nation as a whole, and any claim that the whole country has spoken should be read against the fact that nearly three-quarters of the electorate did not vote.
The first round, held on 25 October, set up the runoff without producing a winner. Neither candidate won a majority. Iotova and Valchev led with 34.6 percent, ahead of Gyurov and Kandev on 32 percent, sending both tickets to the second round. The gap between the first round and the runoff is instructive. Iotova’s share rose from about a third of the vote to nearly three-fifths, which suggests that voters who backed eliminated candidates in the first round broke decisively for her in the second, or that Gyurov’s first-round support proved softer than his second-round ceiling. Either way, the runoff was not a repeat of the first round with higher turnout. It was a different contest, in which the choice narrowed to two and the electorate that turned out chose clearly.
Low turnout in Bulgaria is not a new phenomenon, but the scale of it in this election — a record low in the first round, only modestly higher in the runoff — raises questions that go beyond this one race. Why did so many voters stay home? Was it satisfaction, disillusionment, confusion about a largely ceremonial office, or a belief that the parliamentary majority already settled the country’s direction? This article does not have verified answers to those questions, and it does not invent them. What can be said is that the pattern is consistent with a broader European trend of declining participation in second-order elections, and that Bulgarian analysts will spend the coming weeks debating whether the low turnout reflects contentment with the governing camp, resignation about politics in general, or something else entirely. The result is official. Its interpretation is still open.
For Bulgaria’s neighbours and partners, the practical consequence is continuity. A president aligned with the governing parliamentary majority removes one potential source of institutional friction, at least in the short term. Whether that continuity produces consensus, as Iotova promises, or deepens the divide between the governing camp and the pro-Western opposition, will depend on choices she has not yet had to make as an elected president. She takes office on 22 January, and the months between the official result and the inauguration will be watched for signals: whom she meets, what she says about foreign policy, and how she positions the presidency in relation to a government led by the man whose resignation put her in the office in the first place.
The official result, then, is both a conclusion and a starting point. It concludes the contest that exit polls could only preview: Iotova 57.6 percent, Gyurov 39.5 percent, a first elected woman president, a concession accepted, a turnout of about 27 percent. It starts the longer story of what an elected President Iotova does with an office she has held on an acting basis since January. That story will be written in Sofia and in Brussels, in the language of consensus she has promised and in the political reality of a country where most voters, this time, did not vote at all.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from SRN News [LINK: https://srnnews.com/bulgarias-iotova-wins-presidential-runoff-near-final-results-show/], New Indian Express [LINK: https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2026/Nov/02/iliana-yotova-wins-runoff-to-become-bulgarias-first-elected-female-president] and Daily Sabah [LINK: https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/iotova-wins-runoff-to-become-bulgarias-1st-elected-woman-president/amp].