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Presidential elections were held in Romania on 24 November 2024. A second round was due to be held on 8 December 2024 as no candidate achieved an absolute majority in the first round. However, on 6 December 2024 the Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round, alleging that a Russian influence operation had impacted the vote. This was the ninth presidential election held in post-revolution Romania. The incumbent Klaus Iohannis, first elected in 2014 and then re-elected in 2019, must vacate the office at the end of his term, as the Romanian Constitution allows a president to be re-elected only once.
The result of the first round was a surprise, with independent nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu achieving a relative majority of votes, while the center-right politician Elena Lasconi finished second and also advanced to the runoff vote. Initially viewed as a minor candidate with little chance of victory, Georgescu quickly gained significant support through campaigning on non-traditional media outlets such as TikTok, receiving particular popularity among those disaffected with current Romanian politics, including youth, farmers, rural voters, and members of the working class. He was considered the front-runner in the race, and polling conducted after the first round of voting found him to be the most popular figure in the country’s politics.
Corruption, LGBTQ rights, the role of Christianity in public life, and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War are leading issues. Georgescu, who has run on a nationalist platform, has criticized the National Coalition for Romania, a grand coalition of Romania’s two largest parties, as corrupt. He has favored increasing the role of Christianity in public life, promised to outlaw “LGBT propaganda”, put forward plans towards partly nationalizing important industries, and promoted neutrality and national sovereignty, as well as non-interventionism towards the Ukrainian War, without exiting NATO or the European Union. Lasconi supports secularism, further European integration, alignment with the United States and the West, and increasing military funding towards Ukraine.
Georgescu’s campaign has been endorsed by an assortment of Christian democratic, nationalist, and agrarian political parties, including the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, S.O.S. Romania, Party of Young People, and the National Peasants’ Party. Lasconi’s campaign has been endorsed by the National Liberal Party, Democracy and Solidarity Party, Save Romania Union, and Renewing Romania’s European Project, among several other parties. This is the first time since 2000 that a nationalist candidate made it into the second round instead of either the National Liberals or the now defunct Democratic Liberal Party. It is also the first time in the post-Communist period that the Social Democrats failed to reach the run-off.
The aftermath of the first presidential vote was controversial and led Romania to the brink of a political crisis. President Iohannis, who chairs the country’s Supreme Council of Defence, accused Georgescu’s campaign of being supported by Russia. Following vote rigging allegations made by a minor candidate, the Constitutional Court of Romania ordered a recount, but ultimately decided to confirm the results of the first round on 2 December. On 6 December, the Constitutional Court reversed their decision and controversially annulled the first round of the election, after intelligence documents were declassified stating that Russia had run a coordinated online campaign to promote Georgescu.
A few weeks after the cancellation, more precisely on December 20, an investigation was published showing that one of the governing parties, specifically the PNL, had paid for the TikTok campaigns that the CSAT said were “identical” to the online campaign launched by Russia before the invasion of Ukraine and which led to the cancellation of the first round.