Summary
Far-right populist Calin Georgescu led Romania’s presidential election with 22% of the vote, narrowly ahead of leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu (21%), setting up a runoff on December 8.
Georgescu’s unexpected rise, driven by anti-establishment sentiment, has disrupted the political landscape.
His vague populist platform includes boosting local production and criticizing NATO. Analysts suggest his surge reflects voter dissatisfaction, with some suspecting potential Russian influence.
The election, marked by moderate turnout (52.4%), occurs amid economic challenges, high inflation, and tensions from Romania’s proximity to Ukraine’s war zone.
A very bizarre rise in the polls indeed. A mere two weeks ago he was polling at barely 2%, in the exit poll he came third and instead he’s first. People expected Simion to be the far-right candidate but he was well off.
Ciolacu still has the best cards, ahead in every poll in 1v1 matchups (and his lead mostly grew over time). But as far as I can tell there hasn’t even been a poll of just Ciolacu vs Georgescu, because nobody expected him to get remotely close to qualifying for the second round.
Hopefully Ciolacu manages to win regardless.
EDIT: Lasconi is the second candidate, she beat Ciolacu by just 2700 votes. She is also pro-EU and pro-Ukraine, so foreign policy-wise they’re not much different it seems. Good luck Lasconi!
As per DW
Down to 19.16. Six percent is a lot but can be explained by the locations where exit polls were not voting, in comparison with the rest of the country, as they usually do, so the extrapolation from the sample to the whole country didn’t work out. If this was “exit polls differ from the vote count in one locale” then that’d be a hell of a red flag but on a whole-country level it might mean nothing more than pollsters having to adjust their models.
Also… ok, looking at previous poll vs. election results I don’t think Romanian pollsters are good at being accurate in the first place. If you look at the 2014 elections the polls vs. results situation between Ponta and Iohannis is literally flipped. 45/55 vs. 55/45.