Romanian Elections&Politics (June 9th - Local and europarliamentary elections)

[RGM2609]

Sort-of final results in Bucharest -

Nicusor Dan (USR-PNL) - 42.78%
Gabriela Firea (PSD) - 37.99%
Traian Basescu (PMP) - 10.99%
Florin Calinescu (Greens) - 2.08%
Calin Popescu Tariceanu (ALDE) - 1.51%

Vote for the Bucharest Local Council -

PSD - 32.38%
USR - 26.88%
PNL - 19.30%
PMP - 7.82%

Alright, so let me know if you would want to know results from any specific place/county or if you have any other questions or advise.

[Mike88]

Do you have the results from Constanta and Craiova? And the national results, share and mayors won?

[RGM2609]

How Firea lost the election, and what does it say about the future

Third time is truly the charm for Nicusor Dan, the candidate of the center right, who was elected as the Mayor of Bucharest after two failed attempts. While some voters may have indeed voted for him because of his qualities, it is obvious that the campaign ran by Gabriela Firea has had a decisive role in this victory. Here are all the ways she has given Bucharest its new Mayor -

1. She sent thugs to sabotage the press conferences of her opponent - from Deputy Mayor Aurelian Badulescu to garbage trucks and literal closets, she has sent all kinds of things to stand in the way of her opponent speaking, gestures that have only irritated the electorate.

2. She tried to paint her opponent as part of the real estate mob - based on minimum evidence and recordings that were taken out of context, Firea has tried to manipulate the voters, but that turned against her as she was also trying to promote an inspirational message of peace and joy.

3. Professional trolls - Fashion designer Dana Budeanu and pro-PSD activist Oana Lovin have been sent by the campaign of the Mayor on the campaign field routinely sabotaging his events (Lovin) or bad mouthing him on TV and Facebook (Budeanu). The vitriolic hate with which they have done so made people wonder what is so wrong with him.

4. Name jokes - This may be a minor one, but Firea seemingly thought that making fun of the name of her opponent was a great campaign strategy. Count me in as skeptical that it brought her any votes.

So far I wrote about her attitude towards her opponent ultimately hurt her campaign. But she also made some unrelated mistakes that doomed her -

1. Trying to appear innocent too badly - She was never able to accept her own mistakes, which allowed all of the failures by the Bucharest Administration to linger in the background, while her campaign tried to ignore them and put forward a message without substance promoting Firea as Mother Teresa. The recurring problem is - while she posted inspirational things on Facebook, danced with her husband on old songs, fed poor people and went to Churches, she also led one of the most negative campaigns in recent history (see 1, 2, 3)

2. Cult of personality - Many said that Nicusor Dan was just too absent. Firea had the opposite problem. She routinely popped out of nowhere on the TV screens (on friendly channels, of course) of the people, to the point where everyone was just sick and tired of seeing her face. Her Facebook page was so heavily moderated that even positive comments get deleted and the users posting them blocked. She deliberately cut herself off people with negative views of her, refusing dialogue and censoring any opposition (Famous moment when she stormed out of an interview when a slightly tough question was asked). She created her own bubble to live in, but it would appear it was not big enough.


Well these are the reasons why she lost, at least in my view. Hopefully politicians learn from it in the future. And yeah, I do not like her, but I tried being as objective as possible.

Well, those are the main causes of her loss in my view, and hopefully politicians learn from it

[RGM2609]

Do you have the results from Constanta and Craiova? And the national results, share and mayors won?

Constanta - PNL gain from PSD

Virgil Chitac (PNL) - 28.5%
Stelian Ion (USR) - 24.3%
Mayor Decebal Fagadau (PSD) - 24.2%
Horia Constantinescu (PPUSL) - 5%
Other candidates - 18%

Craiova - PSD hold

Lia Olguta Vasilescu (PSD) - 34.3%
Nicolae Giugea (PNL) - 24.6%
Antonie Solomon (Ecologists) - 20.8%
Lucian Sauleanu (USR) - 12.8%
Other candidates - 7.6%

I will get back to you on the other questions, counting is still taking place in some areas.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Craiova - PSD hold

Lia Olguta Vasilescu (PSD) - 34.3%
Nicolae Giugea (PNL) - 24.6%
Antonie Solomon (Ecologists) - 20.8%
Lucian Sauleanu (USR) - 12.8%
Other candidates - 7.6%

I will get back to you on the other questions, counting is still taking place in some areas.

Are the Ecologists a real party then? I sort of assumed they were more of a scam these days.

[RGM2609]

Craiova - PSD hold

Lia Olguta Vasilescu (PSD) - 34.3%
Nicolae Giugea (PNL) - 24.6%
Antonie Solomon (Ecologists) - 20.8%
Lucian Sauleanu (USR) - 12.8%
Other candidates - 7.6%

I will get back to you on the other questions, counting is still taking place in some areas.

Are the Ecologists a real party then? I sort of assumed they were more of a scam these days.

Antonie Solomon was the Mayor of Craiova until 2012 and he found no major party to run from so he basically took over the non-existent Ecologist Party in Craiova.

PS - After a bit of research, it seems like Solomon ran for Mayor 4 times, and each time from a different party lol

[bigic]

Considering what I saw about Solomon's political history, seems like his electorate would be similar to that of PSD.

[RGM2609]

Considering what I saw about Solomon's political history, seems like his electorate would be similar to that of PSD.

I am not an expert on Craiova, but my best guess would be that he was also voted by many non-ideological voters who liked his tenure as Mayor in comparison to what came after him and many right wingers who bought into the narrative that he was the most likely candidate to defeat Vasilescu. So a pretty mixed coalition I guess.

PS - My theory that a lot of Solomon voters were in fact to the right of center is seemingly proven by both PNL and USR candidates underperforming the political vote for their parties.

[RGM2609]

Unbelievable events are happening right now in the First District of Bucharest. It seems as if the PSD Mayor has attempted to rig the election by modifying 100 precint returns before they get counted by the Electoral Bureau. There are also multiple "errors" of votes being taken from USR and given to a random small party in the same District. It seems as if lawyers will soon be involved, as both sides claim victory and the disappearing or modified returns are still a mistery.

[RGM2609]

I somehow forgot to mention it, but the election was also a milestone for multiculturalism, which is not a feature of Romania (and not only because the ethnic minorities are small, but also because of racist conceptions shared by many that only ethnic Romanians should lead over Romania). Timisoara has elected an ethnic German named Dominic Fritz instead of the vitriolic nationalist that led them until now. And the citizens of District 1 have most likely elected a French woman over their incumbent, even as it remains to be seen whether he allows himself to be defeated. Such results would have been a fantasy 20 or even 10 years ago, and it shows how much Romania is evolving towards being a Western democracy.

[RGM2609]

Do you have the results from Constanta and Craiova? And the national results, share and mayors won?

I have the results on mayors. Please keep in mind this is not a predictive indicator of the strength of the parties - as villages and towns are in no way equal and also the vote is often highly personalized rather than political. Anyway -

PSD - 1438 Mayors (-270 from 2016)
PNL - 1237 (+156)
UDMR - 199 (+3)
PMP - 50 (+32)
USR - 45 (+45)
ProRomania - 35 (+35)
ALDE - 15 (-49)

These numbers may suffer very slight changes.

[RGM2609]

In District 1, Clotilde Armand was officially elected despite attempts by the Mayor to rig the process, with 41% to 39.8%. Now the attempted fraud will be investigated, and despite calls by him to recount the votes, the PSD Mayor has lost his job. PSD has already started claiming that USR stole their votes...somehow, and this whole thing has divided the country on politics even more.

[CumbrianLefty]

and it shows how much Romania is evolving towards being a Western democracy.

Which may be a bit of a mixed blessing!

[Mike88]

Do you have the results from Constanta and Craiova? And the national results, share and mayors won?

I have the results on mayors. Please keep in mind this is not a predictive indicator of the strength of the parties - as villages and towns are in no way equal and also the vote is often highly personalized rather than political. Anyway -

PSD - 1438 Mayors (-270 from 2016)
PNL - 1237 (+156)
UDMR - 199 (+3)
PMP - 50 (+32)
USR - 45 (+45)
ProRomania - 35 (+35)
ALDE - 15 (-49)

These numbers may suffer very slight changes.

Română wikipedia has this vote share by party:

29.8% PNL
23.2% PSD
  8.9% USR+PLUS
  6.0% PMP
  4.9% UDMR
  4.7% PRO
  2.9% ALDE
19.6% Others

PSD dominates and still has a lot of support in rural areas, right? While urban and suburban areas are more PNL or USR+PLUS?

[RGM2609]

Do you have the results from Constanta and Craiova? And the national results, share and mayors won?

I have the results on mayors. Please keep in mind this is not a predictive indicator of the strength of the parties - as villages and towns are in no way equal and also the vote is often highly personalized rather than political. Anyway -

PSD - 1438 Mayors (-270 from 2016)
PNL - 1237 (+156)
UDMR - 199 (+3)
PMP - 50 (+32)
USR - 45 (+45)
ProRomania - 35 (+35)
ALDE - 15 (-49)

These numbers may suffer very slight changes.

Română wikipedia has this vote share by party:

29.8% PNL
23.2% PSD
  8.9% USR+PLUS
  6.0% PMP
  4.9% UDMR
  4.7% PRO
  2.9% ALDE
19.6% Others

PSD dominates and still has a lot of support in rural areas, right? While urban and suburban areas are more PNL or USR+PLUS?

There are a few things to keep in mind before making these results more relevant than they are -

1. Most of the Others votes are actually local alliances between major parties, so the result of each of them is likely quite a bit higher
2. In Romanian local elections fraud is very common. Keep in mind that there was an attempted rigging in the center of the capital, think about all of those isolated villages.
3. And many of the votes for the parties are actually voters who chose the Mayoral candidate that they like and were not politically interested enough to split their ballot. For example, in my home town, PSD got poor results last year but now their very popular Mayor was elected in a landslide, thus granting the party over 60% too. That does not mean they are actually supported by 60% of the population.

Anyway, to answer your actual question, based on these results, yes. On a regional basis, we can see that PSD is still popular in their feud in the south of the country (except Bucharest), which is heavily rural, or at least popular enough to still win. In Transylvania, PNL is actually the one dominating the rural areas and USR-PLUS is the choice for those in the cities. Moldova is a mess, with various places voting for various parties.

PNL and PSD are still fighting for dominance in rural and suburban areas outside Transylvania, with PSD winning in most cases, while USR has a strong performance in the cities but lacks the ground game to get results in the rural and suburban areas. Given that this is a type of election in which the rural presence is high, it did not bode well for them.

[PSOL]

https://www.stiripesurse.ro/video-este-cutremur-absolut-antena-3-a-difuzat-imagini-cu-membri-ai-usr-cand-intra-intr-o-sala-i_1511648.html

Apparently USR-PLUS stole some ballots.

[RGM2609]

https://www.stiripesurse.ro/video-este-cutremur-absolut-antena-3-a-difuzat-imagini-cu-membri-ai-usr-cand-intra-intr-o-sala-i_1511648.html

Apparently USR-PLUS stole some ballots.

Ugh, they are probably from the counting process, I mean the Electoral Board is there too, but you can't say anything for sure in this race

[RGM2609]

https://www.stiripesurse.ro/video-este-cutremur-absolut-antena-3-a-difuzat-imagini-cu-membri-ai-usr-cand-intra-intr-o-sala-i_1511648.html

Apparently USR-PLUS stole some ballots.

This thing got officially confirmed as being part of the counting process. PSD, using its propaganda channel Antena 3, has spread this fake news to force some sort of a redo of the election.

[RGM2609]

Alright so the pandemic is taking a very worrying direction in Romania, with the number of daily cases rising again to numbers that would have been unbelievable just a few weeks ago. Schools reopening seem to be in large part at fault for this, despite very strict rules against social interaction, and Bucharest is itself a hotspot spreading the virus to its residents and the entire region around it. People seem to have just gotten tired of following the guidelines, with anti-maskers and COVID-19 deniers on the rise.

Meanwhile, PSD continues to claim fraud over the Bucharest elections, with Firea demanding snap elections. What exactly do they base their claims on other than manipulated videos is unclear at the moment, but their base is eating it up. It will be interesting if their voters will lose interest in the crucial Parliamentary elections in December and do not vote because they got convinced the elections get rigged, meaning the whole propaganda will backfire. There has been talk of postponing the voting to March, but for now the Parliamentary is remaining as scheduled. However, if the pandemic gets even worse, the idea might be reconsidered.

Another thing that has not been observed by many is that the Mayors, at least in cities, are becoming more tehnocratic experts than the classic all-knowing politician. It will be interesting to see if a theory of many that cities are being run badly because there are no actual experts in charge is going to survive this great, unprecedented test.

[RGM2609]

A bill that I recently found out about proposing to make 4th of June a national celebration of the Treaty of Trianon, marked by huge festivities, is about to pass, driven by PSD. The bill is filled with provisions that make it sound like it is proposing an anti-Hungarian day rather than a true national celebration.

Of course, UDMR has opposed this in Parliament. Unsuccessfully. It seems not to care enough about it to pressure PSD into dropping it. The votes of UDMR are crucial in the Parliament. The party, while not allowing the Social Democrats to throw out the Orban Government, often joins PSD and ProRomania in the legislative process.  They are, quite literally, the actual decision makers. They could have easily conditioned helping PSD ever again of this bill project dying. They just did not care enough.

President Iohannis, who is vehemently criticized by both UDMR and Viktor Orban as their enemy, actually tried to block it, first by addressing the Constitutional Court, then by sending it back to the legislators. Unsuccessfully. In the Court, the majority around pro-PSD Chief Justice Valer Dorneanu proclaimed it is constitutional. Attila Varga, the UDMR proposal, opposed this decision, but otherwise is a reliable vote for Dorneanu. And the Parliament is about to pass it again with a PSD-ProRomania-PMP ad hoc majority. UDMR does not seem to care that much about their own voters.

[RGM2609]

Political sources are now saying that there will soon be a merger between ProRomania and ALDE, with members of ALDE getting seats on the list of PRO. It is unclear what win does Ponta think he is getting from this, as he is basically carrying Tariceanu into the next Parliament, however this rumored merger is very advantageous to the former Prime Minister, who got only 1.5% as a candidate in Bucharest and only 3% for his party nationwide. Without such an alliance, Romania would have gotten rid of him for good in December. But it seems like he escaped political death, for now.

[RGM2609]

The situation in the country is getting worse day by day as we have to deal with another massive spike in cases, as their daily number has more than doubled compared to two weeks ago. The government is now going for a more local approach, placing only certain areas under tougher restrictions or quarantine. What can be said for sure is that people are very worried as to what is coming next, as the virus becomes more of a personal threat (most know someone who died or got infected by now) and the medical system, already broken, is collapsing given the avalanche of cases. Meanwhile, the gridlock between the PSD-dominated Parliament and Constitutional Court and the PNL government is certainly not helping the response to the pandemic to get any better or at least more coherent.

[RGM2609]

Despite attempts by the incumbent PSD Mayor Gabriela Firea to get the election cancelled because it was supposedly rigged (she was unable to provide any evidence to support it) today the courts have validated the election results as counted and thus her defeat. The war between lawyers will continue but by now it is more than clear that there is no way the election will get cancelled, and this whole thing is a play by Firea (and maybe PSD) to galvanize the base.

Meanwhile PSD is trying a rebrand by cleaning up its lists of Ministers and other well-known faces of the Dragnea Governments. Former Prime Minister Viorica Dancila, Former Home Affairs Minister Carmen Dan (who presided over the government beating up anti-PSD protesters), Former Justice Minister Florin Iordache (who while in office tried to legalize corruption both while in office and afterwards in Parliament) are some among many others that are rumored not to get a list at the Parliamentary election. This is a very interesting development, but it remains to be seen whether removing this very hated figures will actually convince anyone from outside the PSD base (maybe some ProRomania voters?).

[RGM2609]

Five more takeaways from the local elections, now that all details are available -

1. The ground game of PSD in rural areas and small towns has been underestimated. Despite its branding problems nationwide, it managed to retain most of its Mayors in such areas, and it will certainly help them in December. The importance of this result should not be overestimated, Mayors help but can not overcome national trends on their own. However, this shows that the party may be in a somewhat better shape than most thought. (Another thing that it is interesting to think about is that PNL failed to gain more Mayors than PSD despite aggressive recruiting efforts of PSD incumbents.)

2. What I mentioned above has also a worse consequence for PSD - it is left to govern places with horrendous demographic, economic and perspective problems as it was shut down of almost all big, growing cities. This may not be such a grave problem when PSD is also governing nationwide and it can send money to put these afflicted areas on life support. However, PNL is in charge now and will probably continue to be until 2024, meaning the PSD Mayors will be left to solve the problems of their town or village basically on their own. It will be interesting if this creates other waves of internal migration (most people who could leave to other countries have probably already left) that neither the PNL government or the local governments are not ready to handle.

3. The problem above does not only apply to PSD. USR-PLUS has won some important population centers 2 weeks ago, but if their party does not get to govern after December, they will be left in a tough position, having to fulfill their promises without government funds that would go to other cities where PNL has mayors. Their problem is probably solvable, at least in theory, and could have positive effects in the longer term, as these developing cities could start growing on their own, without having to depend on the central government that is poorer and poorer given the demographic pressures and the overwhelming burden of the pension system. But it requires competence, which they may or may not possess.

4. The 2024 Presidential election is still a big unknown factor. For example, four years before the 2019 election, who knew who was Viorica Dancila? Or Dan Barna? The political scene is remarkably unstable. What will make it even worse will be that the Parliamentary will happen on the same day, meaning the Presidential candidates will also propose Prime Minister candidates. It will be wild.

5. And the elephant in the room - the ProRomania-ALDE merger. It seems like a bad move by Ponta, who will now carry Tariceanu in the Parliament after him. It is meant to show strength after disappointing results in local elections, but it will have nasty long-term consequences - there are more people who need to eat at a table but it is not clear that there is more food. What ALDE brings to the table is unclear - it has no well-known, charismatic and popular politicians or competent experts. Maybe it has some donors willing to support ProRomania and not PNL? Or maybe Ponta simply does not have human resources - getting people to join politics is very difficult here. But it is a bad move for Ponta, and it also means Romanian people will have to endure 4 more years of Tariceanu gloating and defying them from the Parliament.

[RGM2609]

These are wild days around here:
 
Thanks to the Finance Ministry finally doing an extensive control of the activity of the Bucharest local authorities during Firea's tenure, now the entire country knows that there are unjustifiable (read: stolen) expenses of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions throughout her tenure, and that is only from a preliminary search. The Minister has already sent the reports to prosecutors, and Firea is likely to face charges soon. That may explain why she announced immediately after her loss that she is running for Senate: being a member of the Parliament offers you immunity.

Meanwhile, the rising internal tensions within USR-PLUS are exploding right now as the conflict between USR President Dan Barna and his opponents is reaching new heights because of the Parliamentary lists, from which Barna has excluded several of his opponents, among which there are several well known, incumbent MPs.

And as if the chaos was not enough for everyone trying to keep track of this mess, Viorica Dancila came out of nowhere after almost an year of silence and is now back to being glued on the TV screens. The former Prime Minister has joined various talk shows, attacking President Iohannis and her former boss Liviu Dragnea, accusing the latter of conspiring against her from jail so she does not get a seat in the next Parliament. This is probably an attempt to gain publicity so PSD feels forced to give her a seat. It is unlikely that she will succeed, but well, we'll see.