People walk past election posters depicting candidates for the presidential and parliamentary elections in Bucharest on November 22, 2024.
Daniel Mihailescu | AFP | Getty Images
Far-right pro-Russian independent candidate Karin Georgescu won 22.94% of the vote in Romania’s presidential election on Sunday, securing an unexpected lead in the first round, but with less than enough time needed for an outright victory. Partial official results revealed that 50% had not been reached. Monday morning.
The provisional data of the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) is shown on the website.
In another surprising turn of events, Prime Minister and Social Democratic Party (PSD) leader Marcel Ciolak received just 19.16% of support, missing out on second place by just a few hundred votes, making it the first time since 1989 that the PSD has decided not to field a candidate in the next election. presidential run-off vote.
Another far-right candidate, George Simion, leader of the populist nationalist Union of Romania (AUR), came in fourth place with 13.87% of the vote.
Nicolae Ciuca, former prime minister and leader of the co-ruling National Liberal Party (PNL), came in 5th place with an overwhelming approval rating of 8.79%, while Mircea Gioana, a former NATO deputy secretary-general who ran as an independent, came in 6th place and won. did. The vote share was only 6.32%.
Georgescu’s lead in the first round of elections came as a big surprise, as most pre-election polls had predicted he would receive only a single-digit vote share. Mr. Georgescu is an ultranationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine and campaigns primarily on the social media platform TikTok.
His rival in the run-off, Elena Raskoni, mayor of downtown Kamplun and Soviet leader, is a pro-EU, pro-NATO candidate who supports military aid to Ukraine and is anti-corruption, institutional reform, and administrative reform. is claimed. She was the only viable candidate in the first round to support civil unions for same-sex couples, but opposes same-sex marriage.
Voter turnout in the first round of the presidential election was 52.55%. As of 9:42am EEST, 97.56% of ballots had been processed, with 231,178 votes still to be counted.
