Trump loses in Romania, but can still win in Poland

Pro-European Nicusor Dan is the surprise winner of the Romanian presidential election. The liberal mayor of Bucharest had 54 percent of the vote around midnight on Sunday – with almost all votes counted.

The result was unexpected in the already unprecedented Romanian presidential election. The previous presidential election in November, won by the ultra-nationalist Calin Georgescu, was canceled because of possible Russian influence. His successor, George Simion, received a whopping 41 percent of the vote in the first round of this presidential election and seemed on course for an easy election victory.

But mathematician Dan, who ran as an independent candidate, managed to mobilize many Romanians in the past two weeks. His victory is probably due to the record turnout of 65 percent of eligible voters – the highest turnout since 2000.

With this, Romania chooses a pro-European, liberal president, who also speaks out against the established parties. In his active political life, Dan was fully committed to fighting corruption and preserving greenery in the city. In Romania, there is much discontent about corruption, poverty and the negligence of the established parties to do something about it.

The fact that independent Dan and Simion, leader of the right-wing radical AUR party, reached the second round of the presidential elections was a clear protest vote against the liberals (PNL) and social democrats (PSD) who have been in power in Romania for years.

Although Simion received a million fewer votes than Dan around midnight, according to the count, he still declared himself the winner of the election. He disputes the result and called on his supporters to take to the streets on Monday. In doing so, Simion follows the line of his example Donald Trump, who never acknowledged his loss of the presidency in 2020 to Joe Biden and claimed that there was election fraud.

Simion, who used to be active in football hooligan circles, is very critical of the European Union and against Romanian support for Ukraine. His unexpected loss will be a relief in Brussels, where there were fears of a third European scourge after Hungary and Slovakia. With Nicusor Dan as president, Brussels and Ukraine can continue to count on the support of Romania, which is an important NATO member because of its many military bases in the country.

The Trump Effect

Simion, who previously advocated the reunification of Romania with Moldova, ran a Trumpist campaign in which he changed Trump's slogan to 'Make Romania Great Again'. Earlier, JD Vance spoke out strongly about the cancelled elections, which were "a disgrace" and "undemocratic", according to the US vice president.

But that help from the other side of the ocean didn't seem to help. In that respect, the Romanian voter follows the German and Canadian voters. In those countries, Trumpism led in previous elections

parliamentary elections this year led to a backlash. The AfD in Germany was unable to capitalize on the support of Elon Musk and Trump's supporters and in Canada the Conservatives surprisingly lost, partly due to the aversion to the party leader who was seen as a spitting image of Trump.

But the Trump card is not yet played. In Poland, where the first round of the presidential election was held on Sunday, the candidate of the national-conservative PiS party, historian Karol Nawrocki, has tried to gain popularity, fame and importance in recent weeks by visiting Trump in the White House.

His visit received less media attention than hoped, due to an apartment scandal that came to light that same weekend. Nawrocki appeared to be housing an elderly man with a disability in one of his apartments – in exchange for home care, he could buy the apartment cheaper. However, journalists discovered that this care did not materialize. But photos with an American president or a care scandal have little effect on the electorate in Poland.

In the polarized country, PiS and the party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk (KO) have been in charge for decades. Both parties have been able to count on around 30 percent of the electorate in recent years.

This also became apparent on Sunday evening after the first exit poll was published. Tusk's candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, received 31 percent of the votes and Nawrocki came in second with 29 percent. These two candidates will face each other on June 1 in the second round of the presidential elections. As in Romania, the battle for the presidency is between the liberal mayor of the capital - Trzaskowski has been mayor of Warsaw since 2018 - and an admirer of Trump.

Polish struggle

The first round of elections was a test for the policies of Donald Tusk’s three-party coalition, which came to power in late 2023. After eight years of PiS rule (2015-2023), Tusk promised to restore the independent rule of law, relax the de facto abortion ban and take more climate action. But so far, many reforms have been hampered by internal bickering within the coalition or the president’s veto. The current president, Andrzej Duda, a PiS loyalist, is standing in Tusk’s way. Trzaskowski is said to support the government’s reform policies.

But with this result, it will be difficult for Tusk's current coalition to win a majority in the second round of the presidential election. The four candidates supporting this coalition and participating in the first round together received less than 45 percent of the votes, according to the exit poll.

Even more striking is the high number of votes for far-right candidates. The anti-establishment candidate Slawomir Mentzen of the radical right Konfederacja received 15 percent of the votes. His former party colleague Grzegorz Braun, who is openly anti-Semitic, anti-European and anti-LGBTI, was the big surprise of the evening with more than 6 percent of the votes. The expectation is that the voters of Mentzen and Braun will vote more for Nawrocki in the second round. According to this exit poll, this means that PiS candidate Nawrocki can count on a narrow majority of the votes.

But we're not there yet. Nawrocki and Trzaskowski still have two weeks to win votes. Nawrocki's challenge lies in winning the votes of the

far-right voters, who have mostly stayed home in previous elections and are fed up with the duopoly in Polish politics. Trzaskowski must mobilize young people and women in particular. They came to the polls en masse in late 2023, when a record turnout of 74 percent of eligible voters voted PiS out of government.

If Trzaskowski fails to win back the disappointed voters and loses the second round, the Tusk government will face an almost impossible task to push through the reforms because of the president's veto. A fall of the government and new parliamentary elections are not excluded.