Bulgarians vote for new president

Bulgarians went to the polls on Sunday morning to elect a new president who will succeed the incumbent Rosen Plevneliev.

More than 12,400 polling stations across the country opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and are due to close at 8:00 p.m.(1800 GMT). At the same time, 325 more ballot boxes in 71 countries are available for Bulgarians residing abroad.

The first exit polls will be announced immediately after polls close, and the official result is expected to be released on Tuesday.

A candidate needs to receive more than 50 percent of the votes to be elected.

However, various opinion polls have shown that nobody among the 21 candidates would gather the required number in the first round.

The top two, who according to the surveys of voters' attitudes are the GERB party candidate Tsetska Tsacheva and Bulgarian Socialist Party-backed Major General Rumen Radev, will likely to compete in a second round a week later.

Plevneliev, who won the last presidential elections in Bulgaria in October 2011 as a candidate of the GERB party, has decided not to run for a second five-year term "for personal reasons."

Meanwhile, Bulgarian voters are casting ballots in a referendum consisting of three questions, including introduction of the system of compulsory voting and election of members of parliament by the majority voting system. The referendum was initiated by one of the most popular TV shows in the Balkan country. Endi