Voting for Bulgarians abroad ended at 5am Bulgarian time on Monday, the Foreign Ministry said. Bulgarian embassies and consulates told the ministry that all polling stations around the world closed successfully.

The last to vote were Bulgarians at stations in the US (Arizona, California, Nevada and Washington) and in Vancouver, Canada. Bulgaria had 613 polling stations in 60 countries outside its borders, 44 of them in the US and 15 in Canada. Most were in Europe.

Where it began: Polling stations open in all European countries, with no problems in election commissions

Voters cast ballots from the west coast of the US and Canada to Osaka in Japan, Singapore and Auckland in New Zealand, and from Tromsø in northern Norway to South Africa. Stations also opened in countries with no Bulgarian embassy or consulate: Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, Malta and Luxembourg.

The Foreign Ministry thanked Bulgarian organisations and volunteers from communities abroad for helping to organise and run the vote. It said the elections were organised and held successfully.

In Bulgaria, voting ended at 9pm on Sunday, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said. Parallel counts by pollsters registered with the CEC to work on election day point to a runoff between two presidential tickets: Iliana Yotova and Kiril Valchev, and Andrey Gyurov and Georgi Kandev.