By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.

This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 21st of March 2025. Link to the original publication, in romanian: Înapoi la turu’ întâi – Comunitatea Liberala.

In recent weeks, we have been bombarded with the cries of sovereignists calling for « back to round two! ». At the same time, signatures were being collected for the second round, to be held on May 4, after the 2024 presidential election was canceled.

Uncertainty about the contenders was now even greater than in the fall. On the morning of March 15, the deadline for registration, only two names appeared on the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) website under the heading « candidates ». By the evening, six others had appeared, but appeals had been lodged against some of them, and press releases issued by the BEC said that in the last few hours when registration was still allowed, eight other candidates had submitted applications. On March 16, the CCR rejected 13 appeals, and the BEC did not consider any more. The next day, on Monday, 4 more candidates were given the green light by the BEC and six were rejected. New appeals were filed 72 hours after the deadline for the submission of applications. It was not until the evening of March 19 that we knew the list, because after a sovereignist candidate named Gavrilă, the POT president, had passed the BEC and CCR filters, she too decided to withdraw.

There will be 11 names on the May 4 list. I present them below, taking as a reference the division of the political spectrum into three blocks, which I described in a December article: Ce se clatină mai tare? UE sau partidele-cartel? – Comunitatea Liberala.

The governing coalition now has only one candidate, Crin Antonescu of the National Liberal Party. Indeed, unlike in November 2024, the PSD and UDMR have not entered anyone else, preferring to support the candidacy of the PNL member, who ran for the presidency in 2009, then between 2014 and 2024 withdrew from political life, preferring to stay in the shadow of his wife, Adina Vălean, MEP and Commissioner for Transport in Ursula von der Leyen’s first term. The cartel of the three governing parties has settled under the acronym ARÎ (Alliance Romania Forward).

After the withdrawal – already mentioned – of Anamaria Gavrilă, the isolationist camp has only one candidate – George Simion – backed by two of the three sovereignist parties with parliamentary representation, namely AUR, of which he is president, and POT. Diana Șoșoaca, the leader of the third sovereignist party in the chambers – SOS Romania – has been excluded from the race by the BEC and does not seem willing to support Simion. Also excluded from running was Călin Georgescu. So far, he has not pronounced either on the withdrawal of the leader of POT, the party that has claimed Georgescu’s candidacy, or on a possible transfer of votes from him to G. Simion.

The liberal bloc – in the European sense of the term, through Renew Europe – has sent Elena Lasconi, president of the Union Save Romania (USR), qualified for the November 2024 final, back into the race.

Eight other candidates are vying for citizens’ trust. For the time being at least, it’s best to situate them according to the three electoral blocs that have been formed.

Three of them – Silviu Predoiu (National Action League), Sebastian Popescu (New Romania Party) and Cristian Terheș (Romanian National Conservative Party) – are, as the names of the parties supporting them indicate, in the sovereignist pole. They were also in the November race, getting, in order, 0.12%, 0.15% and 1.03%. I would also put alongside them John-Ion Banu, who also ran for the Cotroceni in 2019, when he garnered 0.3% of the vote.

The other four contenders will seek to erode the support enjoyed not just by one electoral bloc, but at least two of the three. Thus, former prime minister Victor Ponta, until recently a member of the PSD but expelled from the party precisely for not supporting Antonescu, is insisting on the support of his former colleagues. He has defined himself, on the other hand, as a sovereignist and Trumpianist, seeking to identify with the values that Georgescu cultivated. Ponta is a kind of Romanian Fico.

Lavinia Șandru is running on behalf of Dan Voiculescu’s Social-Liberal Humanist Party, which has been a satellite of the PSD for many years. Șandru is, on the other hand, close to Cosmin Gușă, one of the main pro-Kremlin voices in the public space, so we may see her rallying the votes of Romanians who declare themselves nationalist, anti-Ukrainian and anti-vaccination, a theme that has recently resurfaced five years after the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic.

Daniel Funeriu will also cast his rod in the Penelist waters, having been education minister more than a decade ago as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, swallowed up in 2014 into the PNL. But he is also seeking support among sovereignists, using simple explanations that equate this identity with respect for the article describing the Romanian state as sovereign. In recent years, Funeriu has clearly positioned himself in the conservative camp, which denounces wokeism and the so-called sexo-marxism, i.e. protection for sexual minorities.

Finally, the current mayor of the capital will try to get votes from the USR, but also the support of liberal voters, whether affiliated or not to the PNL, as happened in the competition for the Bucharest mayoralty.

Let’s also recall the figures: the governing cartel garnered 42-43% of the votes in last year’s presidential and legislative elections. The sovereignists ranged between 38 percent, which is what their presidential candidates collected on November 24, and 32 percent in the December 1 elections for the two chambers. The usurist camp – affiliated to the European liberal movement – garnered just over 19 percent in both polls.

Two questions are, in fact, decisive: the first is whether support for the three camps will remain within the limits described by the fall’s scores. The other concerns the dispersion within each of them.

I leave it to each of you to make your own predictions.

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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics.