Romanian election results: Trump fan George Simion wins first round, Nicușor Dan comes second

BUCHAREST — George Simion, the hard-right leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, is projected to win the first round of Romania’s presidential election with just under 41 percent of the vote, according to partial results from the country’s election authority.

Simion badges himself as a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, wants to stop military aid to Ukraine and will leave the EU quaking as another key country threatens to turn its back on mainstream European policies.

“I promise I will always heed the will of the people. I am here to serve Romanians, not the other way around,” Simion said in a statement early Monday.

He will face centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, who edged out establishment figurehead Crin Antonescu to make it into a runoff on May 18.

Dan won 20.99 percent of the ballots of Romanians voting at home, barely ahead of Antonescu, who received 20.07 percent. But Dan won 25.45 percent of the votes of Romanians voting abroad. Antonescu only received 6.74 percent of the votes abroad.

Dan cast the runoff as a battle between a pro-Western direction for Romania, which he represents, and an anti-Western one, in his first reaction since securing a spot in the second round of the presidential election. “It’s our task to convince Romanians that Romania needs the pro-Western direction and our campaign will be focused on that in the next two weeks,” he said early Monday.

The election results are being closely watched in Brussels and Washington, as Romania has become the latest battleground between the far right and the political establishment.

The results are also a defeat for Romania’s governing coalition — which is made up of the Social-Democrat Party (PSD), the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Hungarian minority party UDMR — which supported Antonescu. He acknowledged defeat early Monday morning, saying it was up to the governing coalition to decide which candidate to support in the second round and called on his voters to come out for the runoff.

“They have to judge for themselves — I think it’s not too hard — who of the two candidates left in the race are compatible with the principles and values I ran for,” Antonescu said.

The governing coalition parties are set to hold a meeting Monday afternoon.

Sunday’s vote was part of the election do-over that Romania’s top court ordered in December, after canceling the November ballot over allegations of illegal campaigning and potential Russian interference in favor of Călin Georgescu, an ultranationalist firebrand who came out of nowhere to win the first round.

That was the first time a candidate backed by a mainstream political party did not make it into the second round. Georgescu was set to face reformist Elena Lasconi in the second round. Lasconi, whose center-right Union Save Romania party leadership abandoned her to support Dan, only received some 2.68 percent of the vote, according to the partial results.

Simion hoped to harness the election support Georgescu built last year by saying he’ll have a job for him, even possibly as prime minister.  

“We are approaching an exceptional result, far beyond what the system’s TV channels present, which stirred up division, sprayed venom and distorted everything I said,” Simion said in a message projected at his party’s headquarters after the exit polls were released. The pre-recorded video appeared to closely copy Georgescu’s style in making statements, and even included a similar background.

On Monday, after the result was clear, Simion vowed to repair the EU-U.S. relationship and said he didn’t want to be a disrupter in the EU, but a reformer. “Wanting to reform the EU does not mean wanting to leave it,” he said in the written statement. “We believe in a European Union that thrives as a nest for its diverse and sovereign nations—not as a rigid system enforcing one-size-fits-all policies.”

Voter turnout was virtually the same as last year, with around 9.5 million people, or about 53 percent of voters, showing up to the polls, according to Romania’s election authority.

The challengers

The Western establishment would be certain to cross its fingers for Dan in the second round against Simion, given Romania’s position as a key NATO ally of Ukraine.

Dan is an independent candidate who has been the mayor of Bucharest, Romania’s capital, since 2020. A mathematician, he moved into activism and politics in the late 1990s upon his return from Paris, where he had completed his doctoral studies. His activism, he said, aimed to counter the “real estate mafia” in an effort to preserve green spaces and heritage sites in Bucharest.

In 2015, he founded the Save Bucharest Union, a political party that later became the Save Romania Union (USR), shifting its focus from the local to the national arena. He left the party in 2017.

This story is being updated.