The result has stunned many in Romania, given that Georgescu, an independent candidate, was a rank outsider before Sunday’s vote, with opinion polls giving him at the most 10%.
His victory casts a huge cloud of uncertainty over Romania’s general election on December 1, with Romanians now questioning the validity of the opinion polls. It is also possible that the country could lurch rightwards if the electorate chooses far-right parties.
With over 99% of votes counted on Monday, however, Georgescu had secured first place, with Elena Lasconi, a center-right candidate, pipping Marcel Ciolacu, the current prime minister, to second by around 2,000 votes, according to BBC figures.
Ciolacu, who had been the pre-election favorite, resigned as leader of the country’s Social Democratic Party following the result on Monday, the BBC reported.
The results of voting by Romania’s sizable overseas diaspora had yet to be reported on Monday morning, which may affect the final standing.
Lasconi looks set to face Georgescu in a run-off vote on December 8, which will likely have an effect on Bucharest’s stance on Ukraine and relations with Moscow, as the president, though largely symbolic, has some sway over foreign policy.
The president also controls defense expenditure, likely to be a difficult issue as Bucharest comes under pressure to uphold NATO spending goals during Donald Trump's second term as U.S. president while trying to reduce a heavy fiscal deficit, Reuters reported.
The campaign—which Georgescu ran largely on TikTok—focused heavily on the cost of living, as Romania has the EU’s highest proportion of people at risk of poverty.
Georgescu also vowed to put an end to what he calls the country’s subservience to the EU and NATO, particularly in terms of supporting Kyiv. He has also said that Romania’s best hope lies in “Russian wisdom.” He has also said that NATO will not protect any of its member countries in the event of a Russian attack.
“This most disturbing takeaway is that he came from nowhere, campaigning on one, non-transparent platform, TikTok,” Oana Popescu-Zamfir, the director of the Bucharest-based think tank the GlobalFocus Center, told TVP World. “There is no explanation on how he has made it to this level of popularity. Even if you take into account possible sociological reasons such as growing disillusionment, it does not explain how he managed to get 22% in a country the size of Romania.”
She added that mystery remains over who campaigned on his behalf, how his campaign was financed and even where his campaign headquarters are.
All eyes will now concentrate on the December 1 general election. The opinion polls have been predicting it will be won by Ciolacu’s Social Democrats but following the seismic shock of the first round of the presidential election, just who will emerge victorious is open to question.
Popescu-Zamfir said that most of the main parties will probably call on their supporters to back Lasconi but the popularity of Georgescu indicates that there could well be an unrecognized groundswell of support for the hard-right in Romania.
“Georgescu has been taking votes from Liberals, so the big question is whether the electorate will follow the lead of the party leaderships and vote for Lasconi,” she said. “There could be discontent with the party leadership amongst the rank and file.”
This could open the door to the AUR, a populist anti-establishment party. An INSCOP poll from October gave it 21%, well behind the Social Democrats, at 30%, but Sunday’s vote has raised the possibility of the AUR posting a better-than-expected result. It is also possible that the far-right SOS party, which got just 8% in the same poll, could also profit from what could be a dramatic swing to the right that could reshape the Romanian political landscape.
