The most prominent group, in terms of age, was thirty-five- to fifty-five-year-olds: some 67 percent of them voted for him. People over age fifty-five voted mostly for Nicușor Dan. The youngest generation (one million voters aged eighteen to twenty-five) were split equally. The voters between twenty-five and thirty-five years old had a weak turnout in the first round, but it was much higher in the second round — they probably prompted the switch to Dan.

The thirty-five- to fifty-five-year-olds [mostly grew up soon before the 1989] revolution, they were the victims of the economic and political transition after the collapse of communism, and the beginning of the European Union period [Romania joined the European Union in 2007]. The transition had a heavy toll. During communism, people didn’t know what it was to be jobless, paying for housing, electricity, health, education. . . . From 1996, when the Right came into power and started to impose capitalist ideas in Romania, there was a huge privatization of industry, which continued until 2005. That is why this generation does not like capitalism very much.

Besides, Georgescu and Simion said they wanted justice, some sort of “Robin Hood policies” for people who were left behind by the transition to capitalism and Romania’s period of EU membership, mainly during the crisis of the early 2010s. Those people revolted against the political and economic establishment.

In terms of youngsters, the problem is that after 2012, a huge cohort of people lost their chance of a future and became NEETs [people not in employment, education, or training], many of them among the poorest sectors of Romanian society. Those people are really angry, they are mesmerized by the mobs [mafiosi], by the people who make money [easily] like that. These thirty-five- to fifty-five-year-olds can be brought back into the political mainstream with the necessary policies. But these people have a very poor education, they are radicalized, and it will be hard to bring them back.

Big cities and university cities, such as Bucharest, Timișoara, Constanța, and Brașov mainly voted for Dan. The rest — small towns, medium cities, and the outskirts of cities — voted for Simion. Also, 90 percent of the Hungarian minority, which is around three million people, voted for Dan.

More than 60 percent of the diaspora (one million or so emigrants) voted for Simion. They are mirroring the same cohorts I mentioned before: the thirty-five- to fifty-five-year-olds and the young NEETs. They feel that they have been expelled from their own country and they want revenge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many emigrants came back, and many residents were not happy, because there was a need to share resources, and the emigrants were accused of not having paid into social services. There was a clash between Romanian residents and the emigrants who came back.

Protest against the system. If you listen to [the ultranationalist former candidate] Georgescu, you don’t understand anything. He said that he would create a horse industry, that the solution was to breed horses. It is close to craziness. He said we don’t need loans from anyone because we have God. Even [these candidates’] voters don’t believe all this religious mumbling.

Also, Georgescu and Simion started to reclaim the territories that were given by the Soviet Union to Ukraine [the Ukrainian regions with Romanian populations in northern Bukovina, Budjak, and Northern Maramureș]. They said, “If you [Ukrainians] want us to help you, give back the territories.” But this happened when my grandfather was young, very few people remember! It was a totally fake nationalistic call.

Focus groups confirmed that the main reason people voted for Georgescu was to vote against the prime minister [the National Liberal Party’s Cătălin Predoiu], former president Klaus Iohannis, the economic and political establishment, and the European Union.

There was an impact on the vote. There were countless Russian narratives spread on underground media, TikTok, and Facebook: a lot of fake news saying that Romania was preparing to go to war against Russia to support Ukraine. [The message was] “we are the slaves of the EU, our children are going to die for the EU in Ukraine.”

The second thing were the huge rallies by farmers in January 2024 against Ukrainian oil, grain, and processed food. The EU opened its market to these products, and Romania was the shortest way for Ukraine to export produce to Africa through the Black Sea. Romanian farmers said that cheap Ukrainian products and overproduction destroyed their market, which was not totally true but there were problems. For the Bulgarians, it was the sugar, for example. Simion and Georgescu reminded voters of this.

No. In Poland, there was a certain social conservatism, such as giving money to families with more than three children. Also in Hungary: they gave money to the church to be distributed among poor people. In Romania this is not the case; we have a really wild capitalism. Trade unions, workers communities, and middle-class communities are not so keen to stand up for their rights, they try to defend what they still have.

Absolutely. Some Romanian cities and regions are very developed, but you also have poverty in Romanian society, people who are functionally illiterate. Romania is not Poland; in Poland, even since [the transition to capitalism], they tried to maintain a balance among regions, which is not the case in Romania.

Pretty much all Romanians are disappointed by mainstream parties because they became cartels: they try to hold onto power and don’t listen to any criticism. The mainstream parties need to disappear and be replaced by new ones.

All the other countries in the region (Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary) had a moment where the mainstream parties collapsed and new parties appeared, which called for economic, social, or political reforms. In Romania, the National Liberal Party is 175 years old — it’s one of the oldest in Europe! — while the Social Democratic Party has roots in the former Communist Party and the 1990s National Salvation Front. They are old as the hills! They need to be changed, but until now, no party has forced them to change or disappear.

As in other central and eastern European countries — and as in the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, or even Greece — nationalism is the main ideology in Romania. All these countries have border issues and minorities who are within each other’s borders, such as the Hungarians in Romania. In Bulgaria, three years ago, the government collapsed because of the Macedonian question. It was all about emotion about what [North] Macedonia was going to do if it joined the EU: [Bulgaria had] used the veto [against North Macedonia’s accession talks from 2020 to 2022]. This was bullshit, but nationalism was important. During communism and also after, the nationalist agenda was [also] very strong in Romania.

The Social Democratic Party is not left-wing; it is, rather, center-right. The situation of the Left is complicated, like in Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria . . . left-wing parties pretty much disappeared.

A new party was attempted, called Demos, but its highest vote level was only 1 percent. It is very hard to promote a proper left-wing discourse in Romania because the main culture, which is coming from school, university, and society . . . is very right-wing: if you fail, it’s your fault, capitalism is good, and so on.

This is the same in Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria. Our democracies were established by the Americans, not by the European Union, and the main ideas came from the United States. This was the period of Milton Friedman, the Chicago boys, the Clinton era. Our democracy is based in capitalism.