A week after Bulgaria's presidential elections on October 23, two candidates will face each other in a runoff on October 30 - ruling party GERB's Rossen Plevneliev and the socialist Coalition for Bulgaria's Ivailo Kalfin. Or so says an opinion poll released on October 6.

The survey, done by the National Centre for the Study of Public Opinion among a sample of a 1000 people between September 22 and 26, saw Plevneliev, who has Justice Minister Margarita Popova as a vice-presidential running mate, set to get close to 50 per cent of the vote.

MEP and former foreign minister Kalfin, whose running mate is well-known local actor and former culture minister Stefan Danailov, would get 28 per cent.

Former European commissioner Meglena Kouneva, who with economist Lyubomir Hristov is the nominee of a non-party committee, scored nine per cent, according to the poll.

The Plevneliev-Popova ticket had strong support in all age groups up to 50 years, among well-educated Bulgarians, residents of capital city Sofia and other major cities, and those "not living in hardship", the pollsters said.

Kalfin-Danailov have strong support among the over-59s, among those with low levels of education, and among Roma people, Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent, and the poor.

Kouneva-Hristov got support from middle-aged people, some of the intelligentsia and some residents of villages, the poll said.

Twelve per cent of socialist party supporters said that they would be voting for the Kouneva-Hristov ticket, as did 15 per cent of the supporters of Ahmed Dogan's Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party led and supported in the main by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent and which has not nominated its own presidential candidate.

Kalfin and Kouneva are former cabinet colleagues in the socialist-led tripartite coalition set up in 2005 after indecisive results in that year's national parliamentary elections. Kalfin, who originates from social democrat ranks, was foreign minister for the full term while Kouneva - appointed by former monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg's National Movement for Stability and Progress - left the cabinet to become a European Commissioner when Bulgaria joined the EU at the beginning of 2007.

Plevneliev's background is in the private sector. He joined Prime Minister Boiko Borissov's GERB Cabinet after the party's July 2009 national parliamentary election victory, and resigned his post as regional development and public works minister after he was named the party's presidential candidate. Like Popova, who was recruited from the magistracy to become Justice Minister, he is not a member of the ruling party.