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.
Just my two cents, as a Romanian (or half Romanian, half German) living abroad, with family members that voted for this far-right candidate, both in Romania and from abroad:
Romania suffers from the same problem many other European countries suffer from. The status quo parties haven’t come to the realization that they need to change their course if they want to stay relevant, either willingly, because changing political course would hurt their financial interests, or unwillingly, because they’re too dense to understand what the people want.
The economic situation is dire. Over 3 million Romanians (out of ~20 million) live abroad, most of them due to the dire economic situation at home (as is the case with a big chunk of my own family). These are not doctors, engineers, or other people with a ton of degrees hanging on their walls, but normal laborers that moved abroad in the pursuit of a better life. They often get exploited and discriminated, due to their lack of education, language skills, and other factors. One question I get asked very often about by my relatives in Romania is “but when are you moving back home?” and “but aren’t the people there really shitty to you?”. Most of these people dream about saving enough money so they can move back “home” (which in turn is also quite hard given the dire economic situation they face and the very insignificant amounts of money they can save in western Europe).
The status quo parties keep failing to deliver on their promises, with one corruption scandal after the other. The improvements are moving very, very slowly, and people are getting fed up. I’ll quote Milton Friedman on this one (someone that I, as a communist, very often do not agree with):
“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
People are looking for alternatives, and the only alternatives lying around are far-right reactionaries, often because their campaigns are getting funded by Moscow, capitalist think tanks, and other actors that want to change the course of our politics.
The classical parties have failed the average person. Doing a Kamala and just campaigning on keeping the status quo won’t win you an election there, because the status quo sucks.
The capital has exploited and hollowed out the individual, and now the individual is striking back by choosing the most reactionary “opposition” candidate they can put their stamp on.
The anti-EU (and anti-NATO since they’re very closely associated) rhetoric is only helped by the huge wave of xenophobia these people face from foreigners either while abroad or online. We know that we don’t have the best reputation abroad, and this insecurity is well drilled into our heads.
Now to get back to Georgescu, I won’t deny it that it is indeed very weird how this guy appeared out of nowhere. I’m fairly sure Moscow had its money in there somewhere, but that only launched him into the public consciousness. The reason people voted for him isn’t because he got big on TikTok, but because he presented himself as an outsider and he spoke directly to people’s insecurities and anger.
Romania sadly has no leftist parties, nor any leftist candidates. The only “leftists” are somewhat progressive neoliberals that fight to keep the status quo alive (or sometimes make it even worse with their proposed austerity measures). That obviously doesn’t speak to the average person’s insecurities. That’s how this guy got so big, and that’s how many more after him will get big if no candidate with actual solutions shows up.
Even people saying they liked Trump are voting against Calin Georgescu and hoping he loses
East European country has it’s elections meddled with by Russia? Yes, very shocking.
Who could have expected that?
I think Russian influence excuse is overblown. It’s the economy, inflation has been a world wide phenomenon. Everyone is pissed about inflation and how it has affected them. Basic economics and how everything in an economy usually has a six month to a year lag is something that seems to be a hard for people to grasp so the knee jerk is to blame the party in power.
Famously US elections have never been interfered with by Russia
it might seem that way, but is there some proof for it?
Western Europeans after repeatedly denying Romania entry to the Schengen zone: “why would anti-European politicians be popular there?”.
Ps. My argument works even with alleged Russian interference baked in. Austrian and Dutch intransigence create the fertile ground for Russian arguments to catch.
First off, Romania (and Bulgaria) are in Schengen, sea and air borders are already open and land borders will be sometime earlyish next year, secondly, their qualm isn’t with the rest of Europe but Austria, Austria, and Austria alone, where politicians were playing the whole thing for xenophobia points instead of sticking to the rules. Romania has never been confused about who was to blame, they recalled their ambassador, Romanian companies were boycotting Austria, the whole shebang. The rest of the EU had their back, and Austria caved. Well, at least in the concrete matter I doubt it made a dent in their xenophobia.
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!
Exit polls had initially showed showed Ciolacu with 25% of the vote
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.
