Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election today, just two days before the second round was scheduled to take place. The decision comes after declassified Romanian intelligence reports alleged that Russia had run a social media influence campaign to promote Calin Georgescu, a far-right populist who notched a surprise victory in the first round of voting two weeks ago. (AP)
Our Take
The court ruling today is just the latest twist in Romania’s “election marathon”—three consecutive Sundays of voting that also included parliamentary elections this past weekend. The first twist had been Georgescu’s victory in the first round, as the ultranationalist independent candidate had been relatively unknown in Romania’s political landscape and won a far bigger vote share than any polls had predicted.
Of course, amid a populist wave across many democracies, this is far from the first case of a populist candidate seemingly coming from nowhere to outperform expectations in an election. But Georgescu’s victory and campaign style raised a number of red flags in Romania, most notably because he had essentially only campaigned on TikTok, claiming that he didn’t have a budget for anything else. Moreover, his videos didn’t spread widely until two weeks before the first round.