BUCHAREST — George Simion, the hard-right leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, is projected to win the first round of Romania’s presidential election, with more than 30 percent of the vote, according to exit polls.
It was not immediately clear which candidate would place second, with establishment figurehead Crin Antonescu and centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan battling to face Simion in the runoff. Former Prime Minister Victor Ponta is set to finish in fourth place, the exit polls say.
The exit poll projections are not official results, which are expected to start coming in from Romania’s election authority in the next few hours. The exit polls also do not reflect votes cast by the Romanian diaspora abroad.
The election results are being closely watched in Brussels and Washington, as Romania has become the latest battleground between the hard right and political establishment. Simion has unapologetically badged himself as a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
Sunday’s vote was part of the election do-over that Romania’s top court ordered in December, after canceling the November ballot over allegations of illegal campaigning and potential Russian interference in favor of Călin Georgescu, an ultranationalist firebrand who came out of nowhere to win the first round.
Simion hoped to harness the election support Georgescu built last year by saying he’ll have a job for him, even possibly as prime minister.
“We are approaching an exceptional result, far beyond what the system’s TV channels present, which stirred up division, sprayed venom and distorted everything I said,” Simion said in a message projected at his party’s headquarters after the exit polls were released.
The challengers
Among the candidates vying to face Simion in the second round, Dan and Antonescu are neck-and-neck across the exit polls.
Dan is an independent candidate who has been the mayor of Bucharest, Romania’s capital, since 2020. A mathematician, he moved into activism and politics in the late 1990s upon his return from Paris, where he had completed his doctoral studies. His activism, he said, aimed to counter the “real estate mafia” in an effort to preserve green spaces and heritage sites in Bucharest.
In 2015 he founded the Save Bucharest Union, a political party that later became the Save Romania Union (USR), shifting its focus from the local to the national arena. He left the party in 2017. USR leadership last month ditched their own candidate Elena Lasconi to back Dan, arguing he had a better chance to qualify for the runoff than Lasconi.
Antonescu is running as the joint candidate of Romania’s mainstream establishment parties: the Social Democrats (PSD), the National Liberals (PNL) and the Hungarian minority party (UDMR).
A former PNL leader, Antonescu is best known for his stint as interim president a dozen years ago after the Romanian parliament suspended then-President Traian Băsescu from office.
An effort to impeach Băsescu later failed, leaving Antonescu with a tarnished image. He has held no political office over the past decade.
“I am experienced enough to know that victory is not decided by exit polls, and that one cannot commit or declare victory following exit polls,” said Antonescu in his first reaction to the results. “We count every vote and then we will discuss losers or winners,” he added.
This story is being updated.
