Romania’s Contested Election and Lessons for Democracy
After a chaotic annulled election, Romania elects a pro-EU president—but the crisis reveals the fragile state of democracy, rising extremism, and the urgent need to restore public trust.
By Barry Kahn
When pro-European Bucharest mayor, Nicusor Dan, defeated his far-right opponent, George Simion, in Romania’s presidential election on Sunday, May 18, 2025, a sigh of relief swept through the capitals of Europe. What appeared to be another close electoral contest between centrist and right-wing parties was the latest chapter in a six-month crisis that had enveloped the country.
December 6, 2024.
Just 48 hours before the runoff was scheduled to take place, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the outcome of the first round of the presidential election.
Admittedly, it was not until nearly a month and a half later, when protests broke out in Bucharest on January 12, 2025, that I became aware of the extraordinary events despite an almost impulsive tendency to refresh the news on whatever device was within reach. As I scoured the internet to learn more, I wasn’t sure what astounded me more: that an EU member state had a democratically held election annulled when the ballots themselves weren’t physically tampered with, or that it appeared to be a non-event in the rest of the Western world.
Romania has a special place in my heart. I had visited it 2 ½ years earlier to represent the United States at the World Duathlon Championships in Transylvania. It was there that my 11-month-old daughter took her first steps, just meters from the finish line in downtown Târgu Mureș, wearing a shirt that read “Baba, if you run, I’ll walk” – a mother’s equivalent of Babe Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Series. And it was after that trip that we arrived home to find out that while we left as three, we came back as four. Our daughter had been the result of four and a half years of IVF; our son, who was born March of the following year, was seemingly conjured by the spirits of Brasov with its nearby Bran Castle, once the home to the real-life Dracula.
If our lives were a novel unfolding before us as we turned the pages, we would have undoubtedly seen the foreshadowing that told us of the role that Romania was to play in our family’s story. Three years earlier, during one of those rounds of IVF, we took a trip to the Middle East. While wandering the cobblestone streets of the old city of Jerusalem, we saw a group of pilgrims down an alleyway entering a small, unassuming door in the walled city. My wife, who, by her own admission, would send a prayer to any god willing to listen, blended us into the crowd to enter the holy place we could glimpse through the entrance. It was only after I looked in my hands to see that a bill that I had exchanged for Euros to leave in the donation basket wasn’t Shekels but Romanian Leu, that we realized that we had just stumbled upon the only Romanian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.
That pregnancy didn’t take, though the next one did. And after we left Transylvania with one child walking and a second, unexpectedly, on the horizon, I realized that my family had an intangible connection to this country that previously had no relevance in our lives.
Perhaps this is why I’m attaching such importance to the recent events that have unfolded in Romania. But personal biases aside, I imagine that one day, once the dust settles, we may reflect upon this moment and see it as democracy raising its white flag. Modern history doesn’t have a long list of annulled elections. Most are linked to military coups.
To have an annulled election in a European Union member state on the eve of it joining the Schengen Area (Romania became a full member of the Schengen Area on January 1, 2025, a mere 26 days after the annulled election) would have once been unthinkable. The stated cause, which may sound familiar to U.S. citizens, was the manipulation of social media by a foreign state: Russia.
Russian state actors are believed to have promoted a previously little-known far-right, pro-Russia candidate, Călin Georgescu. Georgescu was known as the TikTok candidate, building a massive social media following on the platform, one that was exposed as a pyramid of fake accounts funded in violation of Romanian campaign laws. Georgescu’s presence on the social media platform lifted him from relative obscurity to 23% of the popular vote and the top position in the country’s first round of elections in November 2024.
But regardless of the source of that popularity, these weren’t counterfeit ballots. There was no argument that over two million Romanians had cast votes for Georgescu; more than any other candidate on that day. And when the court decided to annul the election results, many of those voters took to the streets.
The unfortunate reality is that the annulment likely created an unnecessary fracture in Romania’s barely 35-year-old democratic system. The court sought to prevent foreign influence from continuing to flout election rules for Georgescu. But this ruling was probably unnecessary because the odds still favored his opponent, center-right candidate Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union (USR).
We have seen other instances when extremist candidates in crowded multi-party systems came out on top in the first round of elections. Frequently, the rest of the electorate coalesces against them in the runoff, as happened in France last summer when voters rallied against the right. A similar pattern held in Costa Rica a few years before, when far-right candidate Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz lost in a landslide after outperforming other candidates in the first round of elections.
In the first round of multi-stage elections with multiparty candidates, voters can vote with their hearts and dream the dreams of the idealist. In the runoff, practicality sets in, and one votes for the limited options one has. In the U.S., an entrenched two-party system results in elections similar to second-round contests elsewhere, and that is what often makes the system disappointing: it lacks a diversity of candidates and ideologies.
Sometimes that can go the other way. A candidate like Georgescu, who was once the prime minister candidate for Romania’s far-right party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), before the party distanced itself from him for his extremist positions, can find himself on top of the polls. That’s where the runoff comes in. It gives the majority a chance to reject a candidate that might have more support than any other, but offends the will of the majority. Voters in a two-round system can choose a consensus second-choice candidate over a figure loved by many and reviled by even more.
As a result, despite Georgescu’s first-round advantage, the likelihood was high that Romania would have followed the example of France and Costa Rica, aligning behind Lasconi and the USR. One could have reasonably expected Georgescu to pick up the supporters of the AUR’s candidate, George Simion, but face a backlash from the rest of the electorate and lose by double digits in the run-off.
Ultimately, that is what occurred. Just six months later and with two different candidates.
When Georgescu was denied the ability to run and subsequently indicted, the AUR’s Simion stepped in for his former party colleague and received 41% of the vote in the rerun first round held on May 4, 2025. However, in the runoff two weeks later on May 18, 2025, he only picked up an additional 5% of the vote to lose in a landslide, 55-46, to the independent, pro-European Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan. By contrast, Dan had received just 21% of the vote in the first round, barely edging out Crin Antonescu of the Romania Forward Electoral Alliance (A.Ro), a coalition of parties that comprised the governing majority.
There is an inherent challenge to re-running an election. Whatever bias may have led to Georgescu’s initial victory, it was always going to be impossible to reverse. That made the court’s decision less likely to deter his supporters than it was to galvanize them. In the end, it exacerbated popular distrust in the government, spurring protests and increasing support for a far-right party that was able to position itself as a persecuted victim. And it ultimately set the stage for Simion to file an appeal to the Constitutional Court regarding his runoff election failure, now citing French and Moldavian foreign interference on behalf of the new victor, Nicusor Dan.
The electoral turmoil turned the runoff into a contest between two candidates who were anti-establishment in extremely different ways. While Simion represented a far-right anti-European Union ideology, Dan ran as an independent without a party, just as he did while campaigning for mayor of Bucharest. He was pro-EU and an ally of neighboring Ukraine, which made him a centrist on the key political issues facing the country. He also ran on an anti-corruption platform that targeted the historical ruling class of Romania.
After three elections, a court decision, two indictments, and rounds of protests, the Romanian people ultimately elected a former mathematics professor with civic leadership experience. He is committed to rooting out corruption and maintaining European alliances. He rejects the polarization that comes with positions on social issues. Romania likely got the correct president for the country at this juncture in history.
But at what cost? It is possible that Romania’s government discredited democracy in the process of electing a pro-democracy leader. Recent experiences in this country remind us that democracy is about more than just outcomes; it requires protections for fairness and justice. Romania’s newly elected president should be praised for demonstrating that one can successfully run against the establishment while simultaneously believing in the system and rejecting authoritarianism. But he now faces the challenge of re-instilling faith in the openness and legitimacy of the political system while addressing the core issues that led to the rise of right-wing extremist candidates.
This is the same challenge confronting democracies across the globe. They must do more than deliver desired policy outcomes. They must show that they represent everyone and offer everyone a fair chance to share power.
Democracy requires the consent of the governed. Like my daughter, democracies must learn to walk steadily again with fair, transparent elections and clear representation for all communities to regain that consent. The current election in Romania provides a warning, but also an opportunity.
Barry Kahn is best known as the founder and former CEO of Qcue, the company that pioneered dynamic pricing in live entertainment. Following Qcue’s acquisition by Endeavor, Dr. Kahn led ticketing and software development for Endeavor’s hospitality division. He built and launched the first global hospitality ticketing platform for the Olympic Games, implemented for Paris 2024. He is currently the founder and CEO of Duæl, a media and events company reimagining track & field. He also serves as the principal at Kanmoa Expert Strategy, advising on ticketing, technology, pricing, and strategy across media, live entertainment, and related sectors. Dr. Kahn holds a PhD and MA in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin and a BS in Applied & Engineering Physics from Cornell University.