Who can
beat Romanian nationalist presidential candidate George Simion?
Romania’s
political loyalties are complex. Don’t expect ganging up against Simion in the
second round.
May 3, 2025
4:01 am CET
By Carmen
Paun, Hanne Cokelaere and Max Griera
BUCHAREST —
With a nationalist, self-proclaimed Trumpist leading the polls into the first
round of the rerun of the Romanian presidential election on Sunday, the big
question is: Which candidate can beat him?
Romania’s
first crack at a presidential election last November was dramatically annulled
over allegations of illegal campaigning and Russian interference that helped
ultranationalist independent candidate Călin Georgescu emerge as shock winner.
With
Georgescu barred from running this time, George Simion — the 38-year-old leader
of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) — has taken on his mantle and
moved into pole position. Polls would suggest he is almost certain to get
through to the second round on May 18, when the two top-placed candidates from
the first round will face off.
POLITICO’s
Poll of Polls currently places Simion’s support at about 30 percent.
The battle
for second place looks set to be close.
According to
Poll of Polls, the candidate from the governing coalition, Crin Antonescu, is
set to win 24 percent of the vote; the centrist independent mayor of Bucharest,
Nicușor Dan, could get 22 percent; leftist-turned-nationalist and former Prime
Minister Victor Ponta is predicted to win 10 percent; and the reformist Elena
Lasconi is on track for 7 percent.
But
November’s shock result showed a lot can change in the final days before a
Romanian election. The diaspora vote, typically not covered by polls, can make
a difference, and many voters still had to make up their mind in the eleventh
hour.
So, how
would each of those four fair in a runoff against Simion?
While many
voters are not seeking a candidate who could destabilize Romania’s important
position within the EU and NATO, that may not be the first thing in mind when
it comes to domestic political concerns.
Political
analyst Radu Magdin said it should not be taken for granted that voters will
mobilize against an extremist candidate, given the depths of public frustration
with corruption and ineffectiveness of the mainstream parties — the Social
Democratic Party (PSD) and National Liberal Party (PNL).
“Simion is
the main representative of a strong anti-system feeling in Romanian society, so
it remains to be seen if those who are not necessarily in favor of the system,
but are looking for more mainstream options, manage to impose themselves
against the anti-system wave,” he said.
Here’s how
the potential May 18 runoffs could play out.
Former PNL
leader Crin Antonescu looks in a good position to make the second round and
represents the governing coalition of the PSD, PNL and Democratic Alliance of
Hungarians.
The downside
for Antonescu is that he will be seen as the face of the old order of the PSD
and PNL — parties public patience has worn thin on. On the other hand, those
parties include veteran campaigners who can exert influence nationwide and get
out the vote.
Polls by
Flashdata and AtlasIntel suggest he can beat Simion in a runoff.
In theory,
his political pedigree gives him a broad voter base, as well as party machinery
and regional bastions that could prove a formidable force.
“Together,
[the PNL and PSD] have more than 75 percent of the mayors in Romania,” said
Remus Ștefureac, a political analyst and director of polling company Inscop
Research.
Small-town
and village mayors can mobilize constituents to vote for their party’s
candidates by highlighting easier access to funding for local projects if the
country is led by one of their own.
Regional
politics can be a cutthroat business in Romania. Some local politicians use
threats to slash the minimum guaranteed income from those who don’t support
them. Others can offer money, often around €20, particularly in villages, for
people to vote for their candidate. Although these practices are illegal,
authorities have often turned a blind eye.
One person,
who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution, described how exactly such
tactics were used to get tens of thousands of people to come out in support of
Antonescu at a rally in a city in southern Romania a few weeks ago. POLITICO
contacted the organizers of that rally, but received no immediate response.
Antonescu’s
three-party support could also be a weakness, however. It is difficult for a
single candidate to appeal to the supporters of three individual parties, said
Ștefureac; even more so as PSD and PNL have typically been enemies.
And the
parties’ broad local networks didn’t help their candidates to a victory in the
canceled November election. When PSD and PNL each had their own candidates in
that contest, “they barely got 30 percent” in total, Ștefureac said.
Siegfried
Mureșan, a PNL member of the European Parliament, expected that people who in
the first round voted for Dan, the Bucharest mayor, would turn to Antonescu in
the runoff to block Simion.
“It’s not
their first option. But no matter how much they don’t love him, they don’t want
George Simion as president,” Mureșan said.
Antonescu
also benefits from equal support from both women and men — while men favor
Simion, said Andrei Roman, chief executive of polling company AtlasIntel.
Antonescu
also has the most support among people over 60, he said.
The
urbanites’ choice: Nicușor Dan
Polling from
Flashdata sees Dan losing to Simion in a second round, while the latest
AtlasIntel polling data shows him slightly ahead.
Dan gets
much of his support from large urban areas among voters who are typically
highly educated and well-off, polling data shows.
But he’s
less popular outside of big cities — and in his campaign so far, he’s “missed
the chance to address messages to people in the rural areas, to people in
smaller cities, people with low income,” Ștefureac said.
The vote
from Romanians abroad could be decisive, as they typically reject the political
establishment candidate, said Otilia Nuțu, a public policy analyst at think
tank Expert Forum. Voters from abroad can make up to 7 to 8 percent of the
total, which makes an impact.
“Some vote
for anti-system reformists, others vote for anti-system extremists,” she said.
“It depends on who will turn up to vote.”
Dan is in
his second mandate as Bucharest mayor. He’s well known for his decades-long
fight against “real estate sharks” whom he’s accused of collusion with the
political establishment to obtain prime real estate areas and build there for
high profits, often without consideration for preserving historical buildings
or areas.
Dan used
that against Antonescu in presidential TV debates this week, accusing him of
helping privatize large zones of public property when he was a youth and sports
minister in the late 1990s. Some of those transactions were later found illegal
by the courts, he said.
Antonescu
has denied any collusion with real estate sharks and accused Dan of being
unable to produce any evidence tying him to them.
Dan founded
the center-right reformist party Union Save Romania (USR), which he left in
2017, and won his first mandate as a mayor with PNL support.
MEP Mureșan
predicted fewer Antonescu voters would head toward Dan in the runoff than the
other way around.
“Some of
these voters are liberal, some are conservative, some very conservative — and
some, particularly the voters of the socialist party, are partly also elderly,
less educated, partly also from the rural areas,” he said of the Antonescu
voters.
The
chameleon: Victor Ponta
Victor
Ponta, the former Social Democrat prime minister-turned-nationalist, has had a
mixed showing in the polls.
If he does
make it, AtlasIntel’s latest data shows him losing to Simion.
But
Ștefureac sees him as “the candidate who has a chance — theoretically and based
on the figures that we have now — to generate a broader coalition against
Simion.” He warned that the radically new dynamic in the second round makes
current surveys about runoffs tricky.
Ponta’s old
political orientation endears him to some typical PSD voters who may not be
convinced by the PSD-backed but center-right Antonescu. His “Romania first”
platform could also appeal to voters who chose Georgescu last November,
analysts say.
He had been
improving in the polls before he told a podcast earlier this month that he
allowed several villages on the Danube to be flooded in 2014 to avoid flooding
the Serbian capital of Belgrade when he was prime minister, Expert Forum’s Nuțu
said.
“I didn’t
understand what that was about,” she said, calling it either “prebunking,” a
technique meant to preempt manipulation online, or an act to show his
influence.
Ponta
declared he chose to save lives in Serbia over fields in Romania. He said he
was made an honorary Serbian citizen as a result. Not a classic vote-winning
move in Romania.
The
underdog: Elena Lasconi
USR
President Elena Lasconi, a former television journalist, appears to have lost
the wave of support that carried her into the runoff of the canceled election
last year, mostly due to Dan entering the race.
Leaders of
her own party abandoned her earlier this month to throw their support behind
Dan, whom they said was the only reformist candidate with a real chance of
making the runoff this time.
It’s unclear
what the impact of her party leaders abandoning her would have on voters, Nuțu
said. Some saw the move as unfair and will want to punish USR, which could
result in fewer votes for both Lasconi and Dan, Nuțu said.
In an
explosive move ahead of the first round, Lasconi Thursday published pictures
that purport to show Dan and Ponta meeting with a former deputy director of the
Romanian intelligence service, allegedly to talk about this year’s election.
That aims to make Dan look like a man of the system and ties him to a
controversial former spy in a country weary of the intelligence service’s
involvement in politics.
Both Dan and
Ponta said the images were fake and that the meeting never happened, accusing
Lasconi of playing into the hands of the mainstream political system. Dan and
Ponta lodged a criminal complaints against her Friday.
If Lasconi
ends up beating the odds and qualifying for the runoff, she would beat Simion,
according to AtlasIntel, by 3 points.
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