Election
analysis reveals right-wing surge across Europe
Centrist
wins in the triple election did not equal defeat of the right.
By HANNE
COKELAERE
and AITOR
HARNÁNDEZ-MORALES
https://www.politico.eu/article/far-right-also-won-sunday-election-europe-romania-portugal-poland/
May 20, 2025
1:48 pm CET
Don’t be
fooled by Sunday’s triple election: The hard right is stronger than ever.
Centrists
breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday as their candidates beat right-wing rivals
in three coinciding elections across Europe.
In Romania,
the centrist Nicușor Dan exceeded expectations in beating far-right firebrand
George Simion in a presidential election runoff. In Poland, liberal Rafał
Trzaskowski squeezed past his Law and Justice-backed rival Karol Nawrocki to
gain the most votes in the first round of the presidential election. And in
Portugal’s snap election, far-right Chega surged against parties that held the
center, though none won a majority.
Onlookers in
Brussels relaxed on the fear that an upsurge in hard-right and Euroskeptic
candidates might gain ground in countries that are core EU members and key NATO
allies.
But despite
the centrists’ wins, Sunday’s elections can hardly be considered a defeat for
the right.
Romania
Support for
ultranationalist politicians has grown rapidly in Romania.
High voter
turnout helped save moderate Nicușor Dan, whom a majority of Romanians elected
as the country’s president Sunday night. The nonaffiliated mayor of Bucharest,
a pro-EU candidate who campaigned on reform, beat George Simion of the
right-wing nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians in a runoff.
Romania is a
cornerstone of both the EU and the NATO defense alliance. But the rise of
Simion, a self-declared Trumpist who favors cutting military aid to Ukraine,
had fueled fears that the country of 19 million could be destabilized if he
were elected president — although he took pains to assuage those concerns.
The odds
were stacked against Dan, who had to play catch-up after Simion scored a
comfortable win in the first round. Simion cast himself as the successor of
ultranationalist Călin Georgescu, whose shock victory in November led the
election to be annulled over allegations of Russian interference.
On Sunday,
Dan beat Simion by a 7-point margin.
Dan
confirmed Monday that Romania would “continue to be a staunch Ally” to NATO and
would “focus on defense investments to strengthen the transatlantic bond.”
But in the
tight race, it was a major uptick in second-round participation that helped Dan
to victory.
Where
turnout stood at 53 percent in the first round, it ballooned to nearly 65
percent in Sunday’s runoff election — the highest since 1996.
That trend
was also clear in voting outside of Romania, where Simion won 61 percent in the
first round. But as diaspora voter numbers exploded from just fewer than 1
million in the first round to 1.6 million in the second, his support among them
went down to 56 percent.
In Moldova,
where a large majority backed Dan over Simion, voter numbers jumped from 90,500
to more than 157,000. In countries including Italy, Spain and the United
Kingdom, Simion’s vote share took a hit — although he still won there.
Dan himself
credited the “unprecedented mobilization” for his win, in a video message
Sunday night thanking “every Romanian who turned out to vote, made their voice
heard and fought for what they believe in.”
At home,
too, Dan grew his lead with particularly clear support from the Hungarian
minority. Voters from that group shifted their backing from establishment
candidate Crin Antonescu in the first round to Dan in the runoff.
Despite
Dan’s victory, the rapid growth of support for Simion and Georgescu stands out.
In the canceled first round, Georgescu’s victory took the country by surprise.
In the first round of the redo earlier this month, Simion did better than
Georgescu’s and his own November result combined.
The
electoral map of Sunday’s runoff shows how Dan and Simion were locked in a
tight race in large swathes of the country.
Poland
In Poland,
the liberal Mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski won the first round of the
presidential election with a smaller margin than expected. Though projected to
have a 5 percentage point lead, he stayed just 2 percentage points ahead of his
right-wing rival Karol Nawrocki, who performed surprisingly well.
It’s a
high-stakes vote for Prime Minister Donald Tusk. His leadership has been
undercut by President Andrzej Duda, who’s allied with the populist right-wing
Law and Justice (PiS) party.
On Sunday,
Trzaskowski, a member of Tusk’s Civic Platform party, won 31.4 percent of the
vote, while the PiS-backed Nawrocki received 29.5 percent.
Yet Sławomir
Mentzen, the candidate of the far-right Confederation, placed third with 14.8
percent. And Grzegorz Braun, a far-right antisemitic candidate, won a surprise
fourth spot with 6 percent.
These votes
will come back into play as Trzaskowski and Nawrocki move to a runoff election
on June 1, when they will have to win over supporters of candidates who didn’t
place for the second round.
Nawrocki
already appealed for the support of Mentzen and his voters on Sunday, saying:
“We both want a sovereign, strong, rich and secure Poland.”
The
electoral map of Poland’s first-round vote shows a divided country, with large
swathes of the west and larger cities supporting Trzaskowski, while most of the
east preferred Nawrocki.
Portugal
In Portugal,
the center-right Democratic Alliance won the most votes in Sunday’s snap
election.
But the
night’s big winner was the far-right Chega party, which surged to tie with the
Socialist Party as the second-largest force in the country’s parliament.
Chega has
benefited from popular anger directed at Portugal’s mainstream parties. Its
performance Sunday confirmed seemingly unstoppable growth in Portugal, where it
has gone from just one lawmaker in 2019, to the third-largest party in last
year’s election — now controlling a quarter of the seats in the country’s
legislative body.
It currently
has 58 parliamentary seats, but could increase its showing once votes from
overseas electors finish being tallied.
Its huge
wins in the south of Portugal, an agricultural region that overwhelmingly
backed the Communist Party in the decades following the Carnation Revolution,
have many concerned ahead of this fall’s nationwide local elections.
Chega is
likely to gain control of municipal governments in key cities across the
country, further consolidating the far right’s presence in Portugal.
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