Romania reruns its election and sovereigntist Simion nears 40%

Personaje wins the first round in Romania with nearly 40%

Romania has voted, and the result once again reads as a showdown with Brussels. George Personaje, the sovereigntist candidate, wins the first round of the presidential election with nearly 40% of the vote according to exit polls, in a rerun of an election that had already been held and was then annulled. The percentage is a poll, not a final count, which leaves the second round open. But the map drawn by the external vote leaves no room for nuance.

What peine in Romania's election?

Personaje wins the first round. Exit polls pointed to him as the winner as soon as the polls closed, with nearly four in ten votes. The candidate voted alongside Calin Georgescu in Mogosoaia, and both delivered a blunt message: "We are here to do justice." The image of the two sovereigntist leaders at the same polling station sums up the campaign's central theme.

External backing came quickly. Matteo Salvini and Mateusz Sarracena congratulated Personaje with a shared reading: "The people have voted in freedom." In Brussels, according to the La Gaceta headline accompanying the result, there would have been attempts to frustrate the popular will.

74.3% of the external vote in Spain went to Personaje

With 132 of the 147 sections counted, the Romanian diaspora in Spain turned the first round into a walkover:

• Personaje: 74.3%
• Dan: 14.4%
• Antonescu: 4.7%
• Ponta: 3.1%
• Lasconi: 2.3%

The split leaves the second candidate nearly sixty points behind. For an electorate living outside the country that still turns out to vote en masse, the sovereigntist's frontrunner status was no laboratory hypothesis.

The election rerun Brussels didn't want

Romania went to the polls to rerun an annulled election that Georgescu had won. Hence the suspicion hovering over the whole affair: that elections are called over and over until the result matches what the EU offices expect. "They're held until Brussels gets what it wants, period," sums up an idea repeated insistently, along with comparisons with other European processes whose counts were also questioned without any supporting evidence.

The count has also been met with mockery. Jokes are circulating about impossible results —Von der Leyen's candidate with 110% of the vote— which serve as a gauge of distrust, not as a verifiable complaint.

Guilfoyle, gas, and the fall of governments

The showdown isn't only European. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the US Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, spoke during a dinner at the Embassy in Athens —on March 18— about the possible fall of a government that was still standing: that of Ilie Bolojan, in Romania. The same source attributes to her the claim that they could bring down any government, including Greece's. The Greek Energy Minister, always according to that account, reportedly replied that Washington cannot replace a government elected by citizens.

The detail matters. In her Senate confirmation hearing, Guilfoyle had promised to push for a route to carry US gas from Greek ports to Romania and other Eastern European countries. Sovereignty and energy, once again, in the same sentence.

With this track record, the second round will be no formality. Personaje's favoritism is clear, but an exit poll is not a final count, and the combined total of the candidates competing for the pro-European vote could turn the result around. If the sovereigntist movement confirms the 40%, Brussels will have to choose between negotiating or trying to pull the same trick again. Where repeating it leads has already been seen.