Europe: Romania Elections Part 2

Parliamentary election in the shadow of presidential surprise

What should have been a pretty straightforward election, as any one before, turned out to be nothing short of a disaster. I am talking here about the last week’s presidential election in Romania. After the votes were counted, it turned out that top two candidates are not the ones that polling (in aggregate or individually) has predicted. Even worse, the top candidate was not even taken into account when majority of the polling was done.

As supposedly to Romanian society is in a state of shock, we are awaiting the news on a possible rerun of the presidential election. The initial recount is already underway (and it can change the second place result as the difference was minimal), but the rerun would be a novelty.

Never before have I heard about annulling the election results in a western country, let alone on a basis of supposed election interference by foreign actors. And I am not talking about fake ballots - the issue is with campaign and supposed amplification of top candidate on TikTok.

When I was writing my article two weeks ago I suspected that the polling may not be accurate and I was partly prepared for an overperformance of the right wing, but nothing could have prepared me (or you) for a total upheaval that we have seen.

Nevertheless, just a week after the controversial first round of the presidential election, Romanians are once again casting their ballots, this time on the parliamentary election. As Romania is bordering Ukraine and the war there is once again escalating, the elections are especially important. Uncertainty runs high, so let’s see if we can find the edge.

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Political system in Romania

Last time I was concerned with the executive branch of the Romanian government and this time I will focus on the legislative. As described two weeks ago, the legislative branch of the Romanian government holds majority of the cards there.