Also, while this is from an online pre-electoral survey (of 1500 respondents), it seems to have captured the vote intentions quite well: below are my survey estimates (using demographic weights) vs. the official results in Romania (without the diaspora)

Here's a graph (based on my own online survey from May9-17) showing where support in yesterday's Romanian presidential vote came from vv. the parliamentary vote from 2024. As expected, Dan dominated overwhelmingly among USR and UDMR voters, and quite clearly among PSD and PNL voters.

At this point Dan leads by over 800K votes, a difference that is virtually impossible to overcome with the roughly one million diaspora votes left to count. The question is whether Simion will accept defeat or whether he (and his handlers/followers) will resort to Jan 6 tactics.

Voted in R2 of the Romanian presidential elections this morning (in an Orthodox church in Philadelphia). For those who can, please make the effort to go vote - it will be really tight, and the stakes couldn't be higher! Hai la vot!

Simion has flip-flopped repeatedly about his position on EU & NATO. But the preferences of his supporters tell a pretty clear story: his support is heavily concentrated from those opposed to the EU and NATO (though it is of course not limited to them.)

In case you were wondering, here is the same graph as in my earlier post but for those who really dislike Trump (33%) vs. those who really like him (12%). The magnitude of the effect on voting for Simion is slightly smaller but the effects are still very clear.

I've been running online surveys in #Romania about the presidential elections. Lots of crazy stuff but the graph below took me by surprise (and I'm someone who studies communist legacies). This is the share of the second-round vote for Simion as a function of what respondents think of Ceaușescu.

One of my favorite participants at the Hands Off protest in Princeton today.

Great turnout at the Hands Off protest in Princeton (despite the weather). It's festive, but there's also palpable anger.

Lasconi's open letter kissing up to Trump seems like a terrible idea. It won't win over the pro-Trump Romanian nationalists, and it will alienate her own base, which she will need in the rerun of the first round. x.com/ElenaLasconi...

Georgescu is many things to many people but his "mini-Putin" copycat efforts are remarkable. As the Romanians say: "Ar fi de râs, dacă n-ar fi de plâns" (It would be funny if it weren't so sad.)

Romanians figuring out who the winner of the first round is...

Fwiw, my own online survey in the week before the elections, also had him well behind other candidates, though he was trending upwards in the last three days. I will be back soon with more analyses, but his rise came at the expense of another far-right candidate, George Simion.