The presidential election calendar
Romania’s presidential elections will be held on November 24, with the runoff scheduled on December 8.
Ştefan Stoica, 29.08.2024, 14:00
The government of Romania Wednesday passed the calendar for this year’s presidential election, one week after having set the dates for the legislative election.
The first round of the presidential ballot will be held on November 24. Under the law, in order to be elected in the first round, a candidate must get the votes of at least half of the number of eligible voters, i.e. over 9 million votes, which is virtually impossible. This is why a second round is scheduled for December 8.
Between the two presidential rounds, namely on December 1, the National Day of Romania, the parliamentary election will take place.
Romanian nationals who live abroad will have 3 days to cast their votes (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) in the presidential election, as against 2 days for the parliamentary one.
While the latest race for the presidential seat held no surprises and the Liberal candidate Klaus Iohannis managed to get a second term in office, winning as expected against the Social Democratic candidate Viorica Dăncilă, this year’s race could not be more different.
According to opinion polls, this year’s election is quite unpredictable. A former Social Democratic leader, currently the deputy secretary general of NATO, Mircea Geoană, and the incumbent Social Democratic leader, the PM Marcel Ciolacu, both have good chances of getting into the decisive round.
Geoană said he would make his candidacy official after his NATO term in office concludes. He was Traian Băsescu’s opponent in the 2009 presidential race, and at that time he lost by less than one per cent, which raised fraud suspicions and prompted the Social Democratic Party to challenge the results, although without success.
In fact, Romania’s left wing last managed to win a presidential election in 2000, when the Social Democratic movement’s founding father Ion Iliescu won his second term in office.
Marcel Ciolacu, recently validated at the Social Democrats’ convention as the party’s presidential candidate, is confident that he would break the right wing’s monopoly in this respect. The context is favourable: the Liberal candidate, Nicolae Ciucă, a former chief of staff promoted as president of the National Liberal Party with the blessing of president Klaus Iohannis, is below party scores in opinion polls.
The Social Democrats and the Liberals are partners in the ruling coalition, but pre-election tensions and an emotion-loaded rhetoric are disrupting their cooperation.
In spite of ideological inconsistencies, the new president of Save Romania Union (USR) Elena Lasconi is also a right-of-centre candidate in the presidential election. Her sole competitive edge at the moment is her freshness in the political arena.
Other competitors for the presidential seat are the representatives of the sovereignist and nationalist movement, namely the AUR leader, George Simion, and the leader of SOS Romania party, Diana Șoșoacă.
The second round of the presidential election wraps up this year’s election marathon in Romania, after June 9th saw local elections and the ballot for the European Parliament. (AMP)
