Who can beat Romanian nationalist presidential candidate George Simion?

BUCHAREST — With a nationalist, self-proclaimed Trumpist leading the polls into the first round of the rerun of the Romanian presidential election on Sunday, the big question is: Which candidate can beat him? 

Romania’s first crack at a presidential election last November was dramatically annulled over allegations of illegal campaigning and Russian interference that helped ultranationalist independent candidate Călin Georgescu emerge as shock winner. 

With Georgescu barred from running this time, George Simion — the 38-year-old leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) — has taken on his mantle and moved into pole position. Polls would suggest he is almost certain to get through to the second round on May 18, when the two top-placed candidates from the first round will face off.  

POLITICO’s Poll of Polls currently places Simion’s support at about 30 percent.

The battle for second place looks set to be close.

According to Poll of Polls, the candidate from the governing coalition, Crin Antonescu, is set to win 24 percent of the vote; the centrist independent mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, could get 22 percent; leftist-turned-nationalist and former Prime Minister Victor Ponta is predicted to win 10 percent; and the reformist Elena Lasconi is on track for 7 percent.

But November’s shock result showed a lot can change in the final days before a Romanian election. The diaspora vote, typically not covered by polls, can make a difference, and many voters still had to make up their mind in the eleventh hour.

So, how would each of those four fair in a runoff against Simion?

While many voters are not seeking a candidate who could destabilize Romania’s important position within the EU and NATO, that may not be the first thing in mind when it comes to domestic political concerns.

Political analyst Radu Magdin said it should not be taken for granted that voters will mobilize against an extremist candidate, given the depths of public frustration with corruption and ineffectiveness of the mainstream parties — the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and National Liberal Party (PNL).

“Simion is the main representative of a strong anti-system feeling in Romanian society, so it remains to be seen if those who are not necessarily in favor of the system, but are looking for more mainstream options, manage to impose themselves against the anti-system wave,” he said.

Here’s how the potential May 18 runoffs could play out.

Mainstream man: Crin Antonescu

Former PNL leader Crin Antonescu looks in a good position to make the second round and represents the governing coalition of the PSD, PNL and Democratic Alliance of Hungarians.

The downside for Antonescu is that he will be seen as the face of the old order of the PSD and PNL — parties public patience has worn thin on. On the other hand, those parties include veteran campaigners who can exert influence nationwide and get out the vote.

Polls by Flashdata and AtlasIntel suggest he can beat Simion in a runoff.

In theory, his political pedigree gives him a broad voter base, as well as party machinery and regional bastions that could prove a formidable force.

“Together, [the PNL and PSD] have more than 75 percent of the mayors in Romania,” said Remus Ștefureac, a political analyst and director of polling company Inscop Research.

Small-town and village mayors can mobilize constituents to vote for their party’s candidates by highlighting easier access to funding for local projects if the country is led by one of their own. 

Regional politics can be a cutthroat business in Romania. Some local politicians use threats to slash the minimum guaranteed income from those who don’t support them. Others can offer money, often around €20, particularly in villages, for people to vote for their candidate. Although these practices are illegal, authorities have often turned a blind eye.

One person, who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution, described how exactly such tactics were used to get tens of thousands of people to come out in support of Antonescu at a rally in a city in southern Romania a few weeks ago. POLITICO contacted the organizers of that rally, but received no immediate response.

Antonescu’s three-party support could also be a weakness, however. It is difficult for a single candidate to appeal to the supporters of three individual parties, said Ștefureac; even more so as PSD and PNL have typically been enemies.

And the parties’ broad local networks didn’t help their candidates to a victory in the canceled November election. When PSD and PNL each had their own candidates in that contest, “they barely got 30 percent” in total, Ștefureac said.

Siegfried Mureșan, a PNL member of the European Parliament, expected that people who in the first round voted for Dan, the Bucharest mayor, would turn to Antonescu in the runoff to block Simion.

“It’s not their first option. But no matter how much they don’t love him, they don’t want George Simion as president,” Mureșan said.

Antonescu also benefits from equal support from both women and men — while men favor Simion, said Andrei Roman, chief executive of polling company AtlasIntel.

Antonescu also has the most support among people over 60, he said.

The urbanites’ choice: Nicușor Dan

Polling from Flashdata sees Dan losing to Simion in a second round, while the latest AtlasIntel polling data shows him slightly ahead. 

Dan gets much of his support from large urban areas among voters who are typically highly educated and well-off, polling data shows. 

But he’s less popular outside of big cities — and in his campaign so far, he’s “missed the chance to address messages to people in the rural areas, to people in smaller cities, people with low income,” Ștefureac said.

The vote from Romanians abroad could be decisive, as they typically reject the political establishment candidate, said Otilia Nuțu, a public policy analyst at think tank Expert Forum. Voters from abroad can make up to 7 to 8 percent of the total, which makes an impact.

“Some vote for anti-system reformists, others vote for anti-system extremists,” she said. “It depends on who will turn up to vote.”

Dan is in his second mandate as Bucharest mayor. He’s well known for his decades-long fight against “real estate sharks” whom he’s accused of collusion with the political establishment to obtain prime real estate areas and build there for high profits, often without consideration for preserving historical buildings or areas.

Dan used that against Antonescu in presidential TV debates this week, accusing him of helping privatize large zones of public property when he was a youth and sports minister in the late 1990s. Some of those transactions were later found illegal by the courts, he said. 

Antonescu has denied any collusion with real estate sharks and accused Dan of being unable to produce any evidence tying him to them.

Dan founded the center-right reformist party Union Save Romania (USR), which he left in 2017, and won his first mandate as a mayor with PNL support.

MEP Mureșan predicted fewer Antonescu voters would head toward Dan in the runoff than the other way around.

“Some of these voters are liberal, some are conservative, some very conservative — and some, particularly the voters of the socialist party, are partly also elderly, less educated, partly also from the rural areas,” he said of the Antonescu voters.

The chameleon: Victor Ponta

Victor Ponta, the former Social Democrat prime minister-turned-nationalist, has had a mixed showing in the polls.

If he does make it, AtlasIntel’s latest data shows him losing to Simion.

But Ștefureac sees him as “the candidate who has a chance — theoretically and based on the figures that we have now — to generate a broader coalition against Simion.” He warned that the radically new dynamic in the second round makes current surveys about runoffs tricky.

Ponta’s old political orientation endears him to some typical PSD voters who may not be convinced by the PSD-backed but center-right Antonescu. His “Romania first” platform could also appeal to voters who chose Georgescu last November, analysts say.

He had been improving in the polls before he told a podcast earlier this month that he allowed several villages on the Danube to be flooded in 2014 to avoid flooding the Serbian capital of Belgrade when he was prime minister, Expert Forum’s Nuțu said. 

“I didn’t understand what that was about,” she said, calling it either “prebunking,” a technique meant to preempt manipulation online, or an act to show his influence. 

Ponta declared he chose to save lives in Serbia over fields in Romania. He said he was made an honorary Serbian citizen as a result. Not a classic vote-winning move in Romania.

The underdog: Elena Lasconi

USR President Elena Lasconi, a former television journalist, appears to have lost the wave of support that carried her into the runoff of the canceled election last year, mostly due to Dan entering the race.

Leaders of her own party abandoned her earlier this month to throw their support behind Dan, whom they said was the only reformist candidate with a real chance of making the runoff this time.

It’s unclear what the impact of her party leaders abandoning her would have on voters, Nuțu said. Some saw the move as unfair and will want to punish USR, which could result in fewer votes for both Lasconi and Dan, Nuțu said.

In an explosive move ahead of the first round, Lasconi Thursday published pictures that purport to show Dan and Ponta meeting with a former deputy director of the Romanian intelligence service, allegedly to talk about this year’s election. That aims to make Dan look like a man of the system and ties him to a controversial former spy in a country weary of the intelligence service’s involvement in politics. 

Both Dan and Ponta said the images were fake and that the meeting never happened, accusing Lasconi of playing into the hands of the mainstream political system. Dan and Ponta lodged a criminal complaints against her Friday.

If Lasconi ends up beating the odds and qualifying for the runoff, she would beat Simion, according to AtlasIntel, by 3 points.