Bulgaria is divided into 31 multi-member constituencies for the purposes of elections to the National Assembly.
Background Bulgaria is divided into 28 provinces. Most of these correspond exactly to the constituencies, but Sofia City Province is divided in 3 and Plovdiv Province is divided in 2. Plovdiv Province is divided between the 16th MMC (consisting of the City of Plovdiv) and the 17th MMC (consisting of the rest of the province). Sofia City Province (not to be confused with Sofia Province) is divided between the 23rd (southern Sofia), 24th (central and eastern Sofia), and 25th (western Sofia) MMCs.
In addition to their names, constituencies are numbered from 1 to 31 according to their order in the Cyrillic alphabet. There are a total of 240 seats in the National Assembly, and each constituency elects between 4 (the guaranteed minimum number of seats in a constituency) and 16 members of parliament.
Constituencies The following is the numbers of MPs allocated to each constituency by election year. The number of MPs in 2009 only adds up to 209 because of the electoral system experiment of that year (see further below).
MMC Constituency Province Seats 2005 2009* 2013 2014 2017Seat allocation by constituency in 2017, from the Central Election Commission of Bulgaria (in Bulgarian) 2024 1 Blagoevgrad Blagoevgrad 10 9 11 11 11 11 2 Burgas Burgas 13 11 14 14 14 14 3 Varna Varna 14 12 15 15 15 15 4 Veliko Tarnovo Veliko Tarnovo 9 8 8 8 8 8 5 Vidin Vidin 4 3 4 4 4 4 6 Vratsa Vratsa 7 6 6 6 6 6 7 Gabrovo Gabrovo 4 4 4 4 4 4 8 Dobrich Dobrich 7 6 6 6 6 6 9 Kardzhali Kardzhali 5 4 5 5 5 5 10 Kyustendil Kyustendil 5 4 4 4 4 4 11 Lovech Lovech 5 4 5 5 5 5 12 Montana Montana 6 5 5 5 5 5 13 Pazardzhik Pazardzhik 9 8 9 9 9 9 14 Pernik Pernik 5 4 4 4 4 4 15 Pleven Pleven 10 9 9 9 9 9 16 Plovdiv-city Plovdiv 10 9 11 11 11 11 17 Plovdiv-province 11 10 11 11 11 11 18 Razgrad Razgrad 5 4 4 4 4 4 19 Ruse Ruse 8 7 8 8 8 8 20 Silistra Silistra 4 4 4 4 4 4 21 Sliven Sliven 7 6 6 6 6 6 22 Smolyan Smolyan 4 4 4 4 4 4 23 Sofia-23 Sofia City 13 11 16 16 16 16 24 Sofia-24 11 10 12 12 12 12 25 Sofia-25 12 10 14 14 14 14 26 Sofia-province Sofia 8 7 8 8 8 8 27 Stara Zagora Stara Zagora 11 10 11 11 11 11 28 Targovishte Targovishte 4 4 4 4 4 4 29 Haskovo Haskovo 8 7 8 8 8 8 30 Shumen Shumen 6 5 6 6 6 6 31 Yambol Yambol 5 4 4 4 4 4Total 240 209* 240 240 240 240
2009 experiment
As an experiment, the 2009 election was conducted with a different electoral system than earlier elections. 31 out of the 240 MPs were elected through first-past-the-post voting, while the remaining 209 were elected through party-list proportional representation using the largest remainder method. This mixed electoral system was rejected for use in further elections, and the old system was returned in the next election in 2013.
See also Bulgaria, the single nationwide constituency for elections to the European Parliament Elections in Bulgaria Politics of Bulgaria The provinces of Bulgaria, on which the constituencies are based
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