George Simion will face centrist Bucharest mayor Nicușor Dan in runoff vote
With 99% of votes counted late on Sunday, George Simion, whose far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) began as an anti-vax movement during the pandemic, was comfortably in the lead on a projected 40.5% of the vote.
Far behind in second place was Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan with 20.89%, and in third place the governing coalition’s joint candidate, Crin Antonescu, with 20.34%. He conceded defeat after midnight, saying he believes it’s an “irreversible result.”
They have similar Russian meddling issues like the US, but fortunately Romanian institutions do not sit on their hands as their US colleagues turned out to do.