[POINT DE VUE] Romanian elections: pollsters and disgraced urban elites

The first round of the Romanian presidential election is a real political earthquake: the independent candidate Călin Georgescu, formerly a member of the radical nationalist party AUR, came first (22.94%), while the polls put him well below 10%. Although expected to dominate this election, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is disavowed (in third position at 19.15%), and, for his part, the nationalist leader George Simion, known for his Magyarophobic outings, finishes fourth (13.86% ). However, the pollsters saw him in the second round against Ciolacu, but it is ultimately the progressive liberal Elena Lasconi of the USR party (19.18%) who will face Georgescu.

The Western press, which describes this election as a struggle between the “pro-Europeans” and the “pro-Russians”, is totally helpless in the face of this Romanian surprise. Sunday evening, she even began to caption “ Ciolacu, the pro-European social democrat in the lead »based on polls coming out of the polls. The evening then got carried away and plunged the mainstream media into a long silence, a sign of great embarrassment and a total incomprehension of the issues at stake in this election and in Romanian political society.

The profound failure of the Romanian establishment

First of all, Marcel Ciolacu is not the good-natured social democrat that people would like to present to us. The PSD electorate is in fact largely rural and not very urban. The troops of this “pro-European left” are therefore very reluctant to accept the woke agenda of the European Commission. If French and Western European editorialists looked at the sociology of this electorate, the word “reactionary” would not be far away. This “Romanian social democracy” is indeed a thousand miles from what Western inner-city elites can imagine.

But the PSD is now out of the game, just like the PNL of current president Klaus Iioannis (its candidate finished at 8.79%). The Romanian establishment – apparent – is suffering a profound failure, even if legislative elections will take place this Saturday and could allow them to limit the damage in the race to form a new government. Foreign and defense policy, on the other hand, is in the hands of the president, and on this point the results of the first round are indeed a real break in the policy pursued so far by Bucharest.

A Romania more critical of NATO and the EU?

Klaus Ioannis has in fact championed support for Ukraine and a line that could not be more loyal to NATO and its Brussels relays. If the second round has not yet been played, the results of the first are indeed a thunderclap in this Romania presented as being the perfect student of the Western camp. Călin Georgescu has in fact campaigned (mainly on TikTok) with slogans blithely critical of NATO and the EU, and clearly deviating from the dominant Western line and narrative on Ukraine.

The USR is a party of urban centers, and a transfer of votes from the PSD to Lasconi seems quite difficult from a political sociology point of view. Georgescu is also a champion of the most radical Romanian nationalism. His resounding arrival in the Romanian landscape does not only raise questions on the level of Roman foreign policy but also questions on the internal level, in particular in relation to the Hungarian minority in Romania, even if for the moment he does not is not given to anti-Hungarian statements, which have long been the stock in trade of his former AUR party. The Hungarian minority candidate ends up at 4.5% and intends to have an impact at the end of Saturday's legislative elections for the formation of a new government. The game is now completely open for these legislative elections.

Georgescu's success: the opposition to EU wokism

One thing is certain, however: Georgescu has largely been ignored by the Romanian media establishment. Placed in sixth place by the polls, he was given no credit, and he was not even invited to the debate between the candidates organized by the Romanian channel Digi 24 and a university. Meanwhile, the Western press is entangled in its “pro-European versus pro-Russian” verse, completely missing the real motives of this election and the understanding of the Romanian political system made of appearances and pretenses, and a society in reality mostly opposed to the woke agenda of Brussels, including within its diaspora established in Western Europe.