Over half of Bulgarians (54%) have a negative forecast for the New Year 2023 on a global scale, 29% of them expect it to be as bad as 2022, and 25% fear that 2023 may be worse than 2022, according to Exacta poll, carried out between December 5 and 12, 2022, through direct semi-standardized interview with 1,050 adults in 70 localities in Bulgaria.
23% of Bulgarians expect 2023 to be better for the world than 2022. Mostly young, educated, wealthy people and metropolitans think so.
Data shows that Bulgarians are aware that people live in an interconnected world where there are no “islands of prosperity” amid global crises, adversities and threats. Bulgarian politicians will have to be able to “calculate” their possibilities and limitations under such specificity of public perception.
Bulgarians’ scepticism increases when asked what the New Year will be like for Europe. A third of them expect the New Year to be as bad for Europe as 2022, and 28% assume that 2023 could be worse. A quarter of those interviewed expect a good 2023 for Europe – mostly young and educated people with a high standard of living, as well as residents of the capital.
Most are pessimistic about what the New Year will be like for Bulgaria. 65% of those interviewed shared negative expectations. According to 36% of them, 2023 will be worse than 2022, and according to 29%, 2023 will be as bad as 2022. Pessimists about 2023 are more often people with a low standard of living, Roma and inhabitants of regional center cities, and optimists are younger people and metropolitans. The number of optimists about the future of our country has declined two-fold in the past year.
Despite sceptical expectations for 2023 in general, Exacta registered slightly more optimists for the next year in terms of their personal life situation (36%). Pessimists about their 2023 are 47% – more often uneducated, poor and politically apathetic Bulgarians, while optimists are young and educated people, metropolitans, supporters of political formations Continue the Change, Democratic Bulgaria and GERB-UDF.
