With Georgescu having been hit with a contentious ban on standing for election, far-right candidate George Simion is now flying high in the polls for the re-do ballot — and Romania’s mainstream parties are scrambling to stop him.
The Eastern European country of 19 million people borders Ukraine and is one of NATO’s key eastern flank members, with access to the Black Sea. A victory by a far-right candidate in the presidential election threatens to bring Bucharest more in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement while harming EU plans to continue aiding Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Dan, who founded the USR party but is now running as an independent, is polling at around 20 percent. In November Lasconi received 19 percent of the vote, qualifying for the original second round before authorities called a halt, but recent polls in the runup to the new election have her at below 10 percent.
The party’s polls showed “there’s no path” for Lasconi to make it into the second round this time to represent pro-European forces, said Dominic Fritz, first vice president of USR, at a press conference.
The party leadership said in a statement that there’s “a real risk that the second round of the presidential elections will be seized by two extremists who want to take Romania out of the European Union,” and warned of “historic stakes.”
Simion, leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), has been polling well ahead of other candidates at around 30 percent.
