UPDATE: The first round of the presidential elections has now been annulled! Read about this unprecedented political crisis here.
To say that the results of the presidential elections in Romania were shocking would be putting it mildly.
The results of the first round were the biggest earthquake in modern Romania’s history, shaping up the first second round without a candidate from one of the two major political parties: PSD and PNL.
Instead, we have a clear (and completely unexpected) winner – Calin Georgescu, an independent candidate with a far-right, nationalist, and anti-European rhetoric. You can learn who Calin Georgescu is here.
The battle for second place is extremely tight and also unexpected: PSD’s Marcel Ciolacu and USR’s Elena Lasconi are separated by a few hundred votes only, with Elena Lasconi being the surprise winner.
UPDATE: Romania’s Constitutional Court requested all votes to be recounted and the first round of the elections might even be invalidated. Read everything about Romania’s political crisis here (I am constantly updating that article).
Most pre-election polls showed that the first round of the Presidential elections this year will have clear winners: Marcel Ciolacu was first with a comfortable, above 30% intention, followed by George Simion from the AUR political party.
Well… as things have it, the actual results are completely different. At the moment of writing this article, with 99.94% of the votes counted, the situation is as in the screenshot below (taken from the official online platform of the elections):
Here are the current standings – which are probably the final standings, even though the percentages might vary slightly:
- Calin Georgescu: 22.93% (Independent)
- Elena Lasconi: 19.16% (USR)
- Marcel Ciolacu: 19.15% (PSD)
- George Simion: 13.86% (AUR)
- Nicolae Ciuca: 8.78% (PNL)
- Mircea Geoana: 6.31% (Independent)
- Hunor Kelemen: 4.51% (UDMR)
- Others: 8.3%
UPDATE: It appears that Elena Lasconi is the candidate joining Calin Georgescu in the second round, with 99.95% of the votes counted and over 1,400 votes ahead Ciolacu (only the one from Romanians living abroad are left and those are, by tradition, not voting for PSD/Marcel Ciolacu):
Why are these results so shocking?
There are all sorts of surprises looking at the list above, both for political parties and political analysts. Also, many Romanian are probably shocked to see these unexpected results.
First of all, we have the biggest losers: PSD’s Marcel Ciolacu and PNL’s Nicolae Ciuca.
While the latter was shown by pre-election polls with slim chances of making it to the second round, Marcel Ciolacu was given as the undeniable top position winner. But now it appears that he won’t even make it to the second round, just hundreds of votes behind USR’s candidate Elena Lasconi.
If this happens, it would be the first time in Romania’s democratic history that a PSD candidate doesn’t make it to the second round of the presidential elections. A MASSIVE blow for PSD and a true shocker overall.
But that’s not all!
Calin Georgescu grabbing the top spot with almost 23% of the votes is another major surprise. Up to a few weeks ago, Georgescu was virtually unknown, not even making it in the top 5 of early polls.
However, thanks to an aggressive and very smart campaign on social media – mainly on TikTok – his popularity exploded. His messages, which are deeply nationalist, pro-Russian and anti-EU or NATO, resonate perfectly with the views and expectations of many Romanians nowadays.
It’s still surprising that he managed to explode in popularity, above AUR’s George Simion who was the most likely 2nd round candidate against Marcel Ciolacu according to the early polls I mentioned and linked to above.
Actually, Calin Georgescu was a member of AUR and their announced candidate for prime minister before internal conflicts made them part ways.
Finally, we have Elena Lasconi. Representing USR, the relatively young political party with pro-European and liberal views, she is the Kamala Harris of Romania, being a somewhat last-minute candidate and facing huge reticence from the many voters, some even based on gender (yes, in 2024’s Romania!)
While she remains the obvious choice for the liberal, pro-European crowd (and basically anybody who isn’t a supporter of the far-right rhetoric), she unfortunately had a relatively poor performance in recent political debates.
I also have to mention Nicolae Ciuca – the seemingly filler candidate from PNL. A former general lacking charisma and a voice that’s so important in today’s politics, he always seemed to prefer to stay in the shadow of current president Klaus Iohannis and other colleagues from his party.
Still, PNL is the second-largest political party in the country – at least for now – and even though expected, his poor performance signals a lot of trouble for PNL. It makes sense, since they made an alliance with their arch-enemies from PSD to rule in these past few years and their voters sanctioned them as a result.
In conclusion, the results of Romania’s first round of the presidential elections are shocking and come as a surprise for basically everybody in the country – probably even Calin Georgescu’s voters.
In my opinion, we don’t have a clear winner for the second round, which will probably be very tight.
Even more so, the upcoming Parliamentary elections next week will prove to be extremely tricky, with the rise in popularity of the extremist parties being larger than anticipated: based on these results alone, the far-right parties will get at least 35% of the votes. But that’s another story!
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Hi Călin. Thank you very much for explaining the current situation. I was a bit lost about what to expect. Well, still I am. I don’t understand why people vote for a president and after for the parliament. If the president doesn’t have a big party, how is he going to get support? Could you please explain how does this work in România? Thanks!
It is the first time in Romanian history that an independent candidate can get so many votes. Currently, sociologists and other experts are trying to understand how it happened. Until now, it was indeed those with big parties behind them that had a chance.
Surprisingly (or not), Georgescu rose to fame in a couple of weeks – to a month – mostly by posting TikTok videos (with the help of volunteers, apparently).
As far as elections go in Romania, the system is indeed a bit complicated, with parliamentary elections held every 4 years, while presidential ones are held every 5 years. This is the first time in a while that both parliamentary and presidential elections take place in the same year.
I am no expert on Romanian politics. But I know democracy advocates like Malin Bot were very angry over the coalition government between the PSD and PNL which Klaus Iohannis forged. That a pro-Russian outsider won a significant percentage of the vote is no surprise in this age of voter insanity and major Russian interference through social media.
As you mentioned, Calin (you should sue him for using your first name!) Georgescu was a former AUR party member and that party is also very pro-Russian. So that means almost 38% of Romanians voted for pro-Russian candidates (if my math is correct). Unfortunately, I am not certain of the PSD’s allegiances to the EU either. So this all means that Elena-Valerica Lasconi will have a very tough go of it in the second round.
But it was a miracle that she squeezed out Ciolacu. What she needs is a massive turnout in the Diaspora. Unfortunately (I have been using that word a lot these days), many of these are also influenced by right wing pro-Russian movements in their countries of residence. But I know Malin Bot (another person I support through Patreon) will be working overtime to get the Diaspora to vote.
It is really upsetting to see Vladimir Putin winning at Western ballot boxes what he can’t win on the battlefield in Ukraine. In America, I ascribe this to a lack of education, racism, and selfishness. In eastern Germany, I ascribe it to racism and kneejerk allegiance to the former Soviet brother state. The undercurrent which makes people receptive to right wing movements is economic uncertainty which was already predicted in the 1970 book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.
People hate change. They don’t want to and so they are receptive to blaming scapegoats for their own decline. Those who grasped the potential of computers are now billionaires and are fixing the political system to keep the people in the dark about who is responsible for the current situation and to keep the money flowing from the bottom up to the top. I am not optimistic that people will wake up any time soon.
Your analysis is on point and correct, Stuart! Initially, after the shock was over, I thought that something similar to the 2000-elections will happen (when then-president Ion Iliescu faced an extremist leader, Vadim Tudor, and there was a huge presence at the voting cabins to ensure the extremist won’t win).
Things are a lot more difficult this time, and Elena Lasconi has a very difficult task ahead. As you said, around 40% of the voters are almost guaranteed to vote for Georgescu. Even the diaspora will vote heavily for him. Many PSD voters (and probably from other parties/candidates) will also turn to Georgescu. Although I had never heard of him until maybe 3-4 weeks ago, I now think that he’s not the underdog of these elections, even with the expected massive turnout.