People pass election posters of candidates for presidential and congressional elections on November 22, 2024 in Bucharest.
Daniel Mihelescu AFP | Getty Images
Far-right pro-Russian independent candidate Calin Georgescu won 22.94% of the vote in Romania’s presidential election on Sunday, taking a surprise lead in the first round but falling short of an outright lead, partial official results showed. 50% required for victory.
Pro-NATO candidate Elena Lasconi, leader of the opposition center-right coalition Save Romania (USR), came in second with 19.17 percent, according to provisional figures from the permanent electoral body. name and will face Georgescu in the December 8 runoff.
In another surprising development, Prime Minister and Social Democratic Party (PSD) leader Marcel Ciolacu narrowly missed out on second place with 19.16% by a few hundred votes , for the first time since 1989, the Social Democrats did not have a candidate.
Another far-right candidate, George Simion, leader of the populist-nationalist Romanian Unity Alliance (AUR), came in fourth with 13.87% of the vote.
Nicolae Ciuca, the former prime minister and leader of the co-ruling National Liberal Party (PNL), came in fifth with a slim support of 8.79%, while Mircea, the former NATO deputy secretary-general who ran as an independent candidate Mircea Geoana ranked sixth, winning with only 6.32% of the votes.
Georgescu’s lead in the first round came as a surprise, as most pre-election polls predicted he would get only single digits of the vote. Georgescu is an ultra-nationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine and mainly campaigns on the social media platform TikTok.
His runoff opponent, Soviet leader Elena Raskoni, mayor of the central town of Kampuron, is a pro-EU, pro-NATO candidate who supports military aid to Ukraine and advocates fighting corruption, institutions and administrative reform. She was the only major candidate in the first round to support civil unions for same-sex couples, but she opposed same-sex marriage.
The turnout in the first round of the presidential election was 52.55%. As of 0942 Eastern European Time, 97.56% of the votes had been processed, leaving 231,178 votes to be counted.
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