Can the mayor of Bucharest become president of Romania without any symbolic action in the country?
What started ordinary, like any campaign in Bucharest and continued with an unexpected energy in Bucharest, can end badly if it will only end in Bucharest.
From 1992 until today, 8 times has reached the 2nd round of the presidential elections. Only in 1990 Ion Iliescu won from the first round. He had actually won before the elections.
The only time a candidate enters the final with under 2 million votes
Of the 16 finalists of the 8 finals so far, Nicușor Dan starts with the lowest score.
Until him, the fewest votes brought by a finalist, in round 1, were obtained in 2019 by Viorica Dăncilă: 2,051,725. Nicușor Dan has 1,979,767 votes. It is the first time that a candidate with under 2 million votes enters round 2.
Instead, George Simion has collected the largest number of votes in the first round, in the last two decades. Only in 2004, Nastase took more, as votes. But at the electoral score (which takes into account the different presence), they are almost equal. The top of the votes in the first round in the past 21 years show as follows:
- Adrian Nastase (2004) 4.278.864 (40.97%)
- George Simion (2025) 3,862.761 (40.96%)
- Traian Basescu (2004) 3,545.236 (33.92%)
- Victor Ponta (2014) 3.836.093 (40.44%)
- Klaus Iohannis (2019) 3,485.292 (37.82%)
Nicușor Dan is trying to overthrow such a massive difference on social networks, TV debates and demonstrations in Bucharest. But he is missing from the country.
Simion misses no opportunity
During this time, George Simion continued to fly in the morning in London, in a room full of supporters, then to arrive among the priests, after a few days ago he entered the yard of a factory in Alba Iulia.
There appeared on the networks of sequences with his car in a hurry, among the people, in England. It was also said that not all the workers from Alba Iulia went out in the factory yard. It will always be something to criticize and interpret. The difference is that the gold leader continues to be physically present, in different environments.
What stops Nicușor Dan to speak to the students from Târgu-Mureș or to attend a meeting in Iasi or Craiova?
The moment is favorable. The fear aroused by the Georgescu – Simion couple has reached a sensitive nerve of society. Romania looks around. Following the debate from Euronews and street movements in Bucharest, these people look at Nicușor Dan as a real solution.
If the evil is the worst, if a great economic crisis comes, if Russia attacks us, many are likely to think that this serious man can be followed in his rational decisions.
Who will say, at night: give us ammunition, not a plane?
With a solid career in the back and the mule when it comes to the things he believes in, Dan can be imagined as the leader who does not run anywhere, when we come to see it where we see with our eyes.
Nicușor Dan you imagine by saying at night, as Ukraine's leadership did when the Russian army seemed to conquer Kiev: “We do not need a plane to save ourselves, we need ammunition.”
The hard times will come over Romania anyway, in one form or another. The economy, army, budget, pensions and solidarity, no one knows exactly what the test will be. But it will be. And Nicușor Dan cannot be bordered to prepare the hard times in Bucharest. He has a whole country in front and a few days available. At least of curiosity, wherever they speak, people would come to listen to him.
Who is Pahonțu waiting for?
Where Calin Georgescu insulted, when he said that “Romania does not need minorities, but they need Romania, because we give them land and water”, Nicușor Dan could talk about the fact that Romania is a fertile mixture of cultures, religions and ethnicities.
It is not just a respect for the human geography of the country, but it is also a possibility to open new front fronts.
Many expect a European candidate to say that Romania needs an economy without generals and without secret services. That we still understand that Lucian Pahonțu has been retired, but remained in office at the SPP and is waiting for Nicușor Dan, another president to explain that he is irreplaceable.
Of course, you can say “ready to the generals!” And on the television, but if you say it in front of that people it is a promise that you are forever tied.
