Dem
47
GOP
53
For those who are keeping count, there is now another country that, given the choice between a far-right populist who is cozy with Vladimir Putin, and a sane centrist who backs Ukraine, chose the centrist. That country is Romania, the centrist is president-elect Nicușor Dan, and the crazypants populist is George Simion, founder and leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, a far-right party modeled on Germany's AfD.
This election has actually been quite the soap opera. Romania was supposed to elect a new president last year. The first round of voting took place on November 24, and Călin Georgescu, who ran as an independent in a six-way race, claimed a plurality of 22.9%. In second was center-right candidate Elena Lasconi, who took 19.2%, and in third was the sitting president, Marcel Ciolacu, whose Social Democratic Party is center-left, but who is himself somewhat right-wing. Simion finished a pretty distant fourth, with 13.9% of the vote, while Dan was not a candidate.
What should have happened next was a runoff between the top two finishers, to be held on December 4 of last year. However, there was ample evidence of Russian meddling in the election, with the result that the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the election and ordered a re-run, one in which Georgescu was barred from running. This is because he was charged with numerous crimes, including being a fascist. Maybe the U.S. should look into a law like that.
The re-run of the first round of voting was held on May 4, and resulted in Dan and Simion advancing to the run-off. The second round of voting actually happened this time, and was held on Sunday. When the ballots were counted, Dan won easily, taking 53.6% of the vote to 46.4% for Simion.
Readers may wonder if these foreign elections have any relevance to American politics. Fair enough. Clearly, the basic beats here have some pretty clear parallels in contemporary American politics. But beyond that, there was a pretty strong narrative that Simion was sure to win. This was based primarily on the notion that right-wing candidates took the great majority of the vote in last year's (vacated) election, so of course the right-wing Simion was going to take the great majority of the vote in this one.
This narrative was not, it should be noted, supported by polling. There were 15 head-to-head polls taken before the first round of voting was conducted, and Dan lead Simion in 10 of them. There were 9 head-to-head polls taken after the first round of voting, and Dan led Simion in 5 of them. In fact, one pollster—Noi, Cetățenii—predicted that the final tally would be 55% for Dan, 45% for Simion. They missed by one point, well within the 2.6% margin of error.
Anyhow, Simion is now claiming that his loss was fraudulent, and that Dan won due to interference from France and Moldova. And several prominent members of the Trump administration, most obviously Elon Musk, have jumped in on the side of Simion. They don't have any evidence, mind you, but Musk & Co. would much prefer that countries be run by right-wing anti-Ukraine proto-fascists than by anti-Russia/pro-EU centrists. It's a reminder that Musk and his ilk are just reactionaries who declare whatever they want to be true, and then try to make that stick. It's also a reminder that when it comes to polling, the pollster's model of the electorate is crucial. There was very high turnout on Sunday, and those pollsters who foresaw that got the outcome right. Those who did not, did not.
We don't like to overdo it on the foreign elections, but we'll probably do one, or maybe two, more tomorrow. (Z)