Romanians woke up this morning in an eerie new world, where an unknown religious and political extremist won the first round of the presidential election with over 2,1 million votes, a whopping 23% of total cast votes.
Călin Georgescu flew under the mainstream media’s radar, did not hold any public gatherings, and went all in on TikTok using nationalist or ultra-religious slogans. The 62-year-old was on the list of potential prime ministers in 2011 and 2012 as a possible replacement for Emil Boc, whose popularity was waning after the measures taken during the economic crisis of 2009-2010.
After the 2020 elections, when the extremist and nationalist party AUR (Romanian Union Alliance) managed to enter the Parliament, George Simion’s party proposed Călin Georgescu as its candidate for Prime Minister.
In the second round of presidential elections, Georgescu will meet pro-European Elena Lasconi, a Save Romania Alliance (USR) candidate who unexpectedly surpassed PSD candidate Marcel Ciolacu this morning.
Lasconi got 1.770.629 votes, being just 1.461 votes over Ciolacu (1.769.168 total votes), after a total of 99,95% were counted. By 9 PM last evening, when the polling stations closed, 52.40% of the registered voters had cast their vote for the election of the President of Romania, 50.47% women and 49.53% men.
At the end of 2023, Romania ranked fourth in the European Union by the largest share of people using the Chinese app TikTok, with 39% percent of the total population. Also, Romania ranks last in Europe regarding the percentage of the population aged 25-74 with tertiary education.
