2024 Romanian presidential election

Based on Wikipedia: 2024 Romanian presidential election

The Election That Got Cancelled

In late 2024, Romania held a presidential election that nobody saw coming—and then, in an unprecedented move, the country's Constitutional Court simply erased it from existence. The ballots were cast, the votes were counted, and a winner was emerging. Then the court said: none of this happened.

This wasn't a small procedural hiccup. Romania's highest court annulled an entire national election just two days before the runoff vote, claiming that Russian interference had corrupted the results. It was the kind of dramatic intervention that sounds like it belongs in a political thriller, except it happened in a European Union member state with thirty-five years of democratic experience since the fall of communism.

To understand how Romania arrived at this extraordinary moment, you need to understand the man at the center of the storm: a nationalist politician named Călin Georgescu who seemingly came out of nowhere to win the first round of voting.

The TikTok Messiah

Before November 2024, Călin Georgescu was considered a minor figure in Romanian politics. Polls showed him languishing in single digits, far behind the established candidates from the major parties. He had no significant party apparatus behind him, no television advertising budget, no traditional campaign infrastructure.

What he had was TikTok.

Georgescu built his campaign almost entirely on short-form video, bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers that had defined Romanian politics for decades. His supporters called him "The TikTok Messiah"—a nickname that was equal parts mockery and genuine admiration. His videos featured religious nationalist messaging, appeals to traditional family values, and fierce criticism of Romania's political establishment.

The message resonated with voters who felt ignored by mainstream politics: young people frustrated with corruption, farmers angry about agricultural policies, rural communities that felt left behind by urbanization, and working-class Romanians struggling with economic pressures. These were voters who had largely tuned out of conventional political coverage but spent hours scrolling through social media.

When the first-round votes were counted on November 24th, Georgescu had won. Not just performed well—actually won, finishing first with more votes than any other candidate. The established political class was stunned. Polling conducted after the vote found him to be the most popular figure in Romanian politics.

The Woman Who Would Challenge Him

Finishing second, and advancing to the runoff against Georgescu, was Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union. If Georgescu represented a sharp turn toward nationalism and tradition, Lasconi represented continued integration with the West.

She favored closer alignment with the United States, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (commonly known as NATO). She supported secularism—the separation of religious institutions from government—and wanted to increase military funding to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia's invasion. Her vision was of a Romania firmly anchored in European democratic institutions.

The contrast between the two candidates could hardly have been starker.

Georgescu wanted Romania to adopt a position of geopolitical non-alignment, refusing to choose sides between Western democracies and Russia. He pledged to end military aid to Ukraine. He promised to increase the role of Christianity in public life and to outlaw what he called "LGBT propaganda." He advocated for partially nationalizing important industries.

Lasconi framed the runoff in existential terms. She said Romania faced "a historical confrontation between preserving Romania's young democracy and those who want to return Romania to the Russian sphere of influence." She accused Georgescu of being an isolationist and "an open admirer of Vladimir Putin."

Georgescu pushed back against these characterizations. He denied being an extremist or a fascist. "We remain directly linked to European values," he said, "but we must find our own values."

A Political Earthquake

The first-round results represented a political earthquake in Romania.

This was the first time since 2000 that a nationalist candidate had made it to the second round of a presidential election. For a quarter century, the runoff had always featured candidates from Romania's establishment parties: the National Liberals or the Democratic Liberals on the center-right, the Social Democrats on the center-left.

In 2024, both of those traditional powerhouses were eliminated in the first round.

The Social Democrats, one of Romania's two dominant political forces, failed to reach the runoff for the first time in the entire post-communist period. Their candidate, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, had entered the race as the favorite. He finished third.

The National Liberals fared even worse. Their candidate, Nicolae Ciucă—a former prime minister himself—finished fourth. The party that had helped govern Romania for years found itself watching from the sidelines as an independent TikTok candidate and a relatively new party leader prepared to battle for the presidency.

The Accusations Begin

Almost immediately after the first-round results became clear, Romania's security establishment began raising alarms.

President Klaus Iohannis, who was constitutionally barred from seeking another term, chaired Romania's Supreme Council of Defence. Under his leadership, the council accused Georgescu's campaign of being supported by Russia. The allegation was explosive: a foreign adversary had allegedly helped engineer the surprise victory of an anti-establishment nationalist.

A minor candidate who had lost badly filed allegations of vote rigging. The Constitutional Court ordered a recount. But on December 2nd, after examining the evidence, the court confirmed the first-round results. Georgescu had won fair and square, as far as anyone could officially determine.

The runoff was scheduled for December 8th.

And Then Everything Changed

Four days before Romanians were supposed to return to the polls, the intelligence services declassified a set of documents. These documents, according to officials, showed that Russia had run a coordinated online campaign to promote Georgescu. The operation allegedly used tactics "identical" to those Russia had employed before invading Ukraine—an influence playbook designed to shape public opinion through social media manipulation.

On December 6th, the Constitutional Court made its fateful decision. In a dramatic reversal of its ruling from just four days earlier, the court annulled the entire first round of the election.

Every vote cast by every Romanian citizen on November 24th was, in legal terms, erased. The December 8th runoff was cancelled. The election would need to start over from scratch.

It was an extraordinary use of judicial power. Constitutional courts in democracies occasionally intervene in elections—ordering recounts, invalidating specific ballots, requiring procedural changes. But annulling an entire national election based on alleged foreign influence was nearly unprecedented.

The Twist Nobody Expected

The story took another turn on December 20th, when investigative journalists published findings that complicated the official narrative significantly.

The TikTok campaigns that the Supreme Council of National Defence had compared to Russian influence operations? According to the investigation, they had actually been paid for by the National Liberal Party—one of Romania's governing parties, and part of the political establishment that had been most vocal about the dangers of Georgescu's rise.

This created a deeply awkward situation. The court had annulled the election based partly on concerns about suspicious social media campaigns. Now evidence suggested that a mainstream political party had been running the very campaigns that looked so suspicious.

It raised uncomfortable questions. Had the governing parties accidentally triggered the annulment of an election they were losing? Had the security services misattributed domestic political advertising as foreign interference? Or was the situation even more complex, with both Russian operations and domestic campaigns running simultaneously?

Why This Matters Beyond Romania

Romania's cancelled election sits at the intersection of several anxieties that haunt democracies everywhere in the 2020s.

First, there's the question of social media's role in elections. Georgescu's rise demonstrated that a candidate with virtually no traditional campaign infrastructure could win a national election through short-form video content. The platforms that enable this kind of campaigning—TikTok especially—operate with algorithmic systems that are opaque even to the candidates themselves. Nobody fully understands why some content goes viral while similar content disappears into obscurity.

This creates a genuine problem for democratic accountability. Traditional campaign advertising is regulated, disclosed, and archived. A television ad buys airtime from a broadcaster; the purchase is recorded; the content is preserved. But a wave of TikTok videos promoting a candidate can emerge from a combination of organic enthusiasm, paid promotion, and algorithmic amplification in ways that are nearly impossible to untangle.

Second, there's the question of Russian interference. Intelligence agencies across the West have documented numerous Russian operations aimed at influencing elections in Europe and North America. These operations are real. They use sophisticated techniques. They can be difficult to distinguish from ordinary political activity.

But the very reality of Russian interference creates a new vulnerability: the possibility that any unexpected electoral result can be attributed to foreign manipulation, whether or not such manipulation actually occurred. This is a dangerous dynamic. If establishment parties can invoke "Russian interference" to invalidate elections they lose, democracy itself is undermined—even if the invocation is made in good faith.

The Constitutional Court's Dilemma

Romania's Constitutional Court faced a genuinely difficult situation, though their handling of it satisfied almost nobody.

The court's initial decision on December 2nd—confirming the first-round results—suggested they believed the election had been conducted legitimately. Their reversal four days later suggested that new information had changed their assessment. But the whiplash between these two positions undermined confidence in both.

Critics of the annulment argued that the court had essentially disenfranchised millions of voters based on intelligence assessments rather than proven facts. The declassified documents showed that Russia had run influence campaigns, but they did not prove that these campaigns had changed the outcome. Plenty of candidates lose elections despite having foreign support, and plenty win despite foreign opposition.

Defenders of the annulment argued that the court had no choice. If a foreign adversary had corrupted the information environment surrounding an election, how could the results be considered legitimate? Allowing a potentially compromised election to stand would be its own form of democratic damage.

The split on the court itself—the decision on disqualifying another nationalist candidate had been 5-2 along party lines—suggested that judicial politics were playing a role alongside legal reasoning.

What Georgescu Represented

Whatever the truth about foreign interference, Georgescu's support was real. Millions of Romanians voted for him. Understanding why requires looking at what he was offering.

His platform combined several elements that don't always go together in Western political frameworks. He was a nationalist who criticized Romania's mainstream parties as corrupt—a message that resonated in a country where corruption has been a persistent problem. He was religious, emphasizing the role of Christianity in Romanian identity at a time when many Romanians feel that traditional values are under threat. He was skeptical of Romania's Western alliances, which appealed to voters exhausted by decades of being told that European and American institutions knew best.

On the Russo-Ukrainian War, his position of neutrality and non-intervention struck many Western observers as tantamount to supporting Russia. But for some Romanian voters, especially in rural areas, the question was simpler: why should Romania send weapons and money to a foreign conflict when there are pressing needs at home?

His opposition to what he called "LGBT propaganda" aligned with socially conservative views that remain widespread in Romania, even as urban areas and younger generations have become more accepting of gender and sexual minorities. The 2018 referendum on constitutionally banning same-sex unions failed due to low turnout, not because Romanians supported marriage equality—only about 20% of eligible voters participated, and those who did overwhelmingly voted for the ban.

Lasconi's Complicated Position

Elena Lasconi found herself in an unusual position for the runoff that never happened. She was the pro-Western, pro-European candidate—but her own history on social issues was complicated.

Earlier in 2023, she had said she would have voted "Yes" in that failed 2018 referendum to ban same-sex unions. Her own daughter, Oana, publicly denounced her as a "homophobe," saying she was "shocked and disgusted" at her mother's position.

Lasconi quickly reversed course. She said she did not oppose civil unions for same-sex couples and might eventually support marriage equality. She emphasized that her party welcomed members who were "atheists or LGBTQ individuals."

This rapid evolution illustrated the tensions within the coalition that would have needed to unite behind her. Liberal parties, LGBTQ rights organizations, and secular urbanites were all endorsing Lasconi against Georgescu—but some of them were doing so despite significant reservations about her actual views.

The International Dimension

Romania's election drew attention from across Europe, particularly from countries facing their own struggles with Russian influence.

Moldova's president, Maia Sandu, endorsed Lasconi for the runoff. This was significant: Moldova, which shares a language and much history with Romania, had just survived its own contested election in which Sandu narrowly won reelection despite alleged Russian interference. She saw in Georgescu a threat similar to what she had faced.

Georgia's president, Salome Zourabichvili, also expressed support for Lasconi. Georgia was in the midst of its own political crisis over disputed election results and the government's turn away from European integration. For Zourabichvili, an embattled pro-Western leader, the Romanian election represented another front in a broader struggle.

French President Emmanuel Macron joined the chorus of support for Lasconi—a reminder that major European leaders were watching the Romanian race with genuine concern.

The Debates That Were

Before everything fell apart, Romania had actually conducted an extensive series of campaign debates. Between October 28th and November 21st, there were 38 broadcast debates: 30 on television, six on radio, and three online.

This is, by the standards of most democracies, an impressive amount of structured political discourse. Multiple broadcasters participated, including public stations like TVR and private outlets across the political spectrum. Candidates had repeated opportunities to make their cases and challenge their opponents.

Yet the debates seemed to matter less than the social media dynamics that propelled Georgescu from obscurity to front-runner status. Traditional media still commands attention in Romania, but its ability to shape electoral outcomes appears to be waning—a pattern visible in democracies around the world.

The Question of What Comes Next

As of the annulment, Romania faced the prospect of running the entire presidential election again. But when? And under what rules? And with what safeguards against the social media dynamics that had allegedly corrupted the first attempt?

These questions had no easy answers.

If Georgescu were allowed to run again, would he win again? His support appeared genuine and substantial. Simply rerunning the election might produce the same result—or might produce a different result due to all the controversy, which would raise its own questions about legitimacy.

If he were barred from running—as another nationalist candidate, Diana Șoșoacă, had been before the first round—that would raise different concerns. Șoșoacă's disqualification had already been controversial; the Constitutional Court ruled that her public statements "systematically" violated Romania's constitutional commitment to European and Atlantic integration. She claimed in response that "Americans, Israelis, and the European Union have plotted to rig the Romanian election before it has begun."

The accusation was inflammatory and almost certainly false. But the fact that a constitutional court was disqualifying candidates based on their political positions, rather than criminal convictions or procedural violations, was genuinely unusual by European standards.

Democracy Under Pressure

Romania's cancelled election is a case study in how democracy can come under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously.

There is the pressure of foreign interference—real or alleged—which creates both genuine threats and convenient excuses.

There is the pressure of social media platforms that enable new forms of political mobilization while undermining the information ecosystems that democracies depend upon.

There is the pressure of populist movements that channel genuine grievances—about corruption, about cultural change, about economic dislocation—in ways that established institutions struggle to address.

And there is the pressure of institutional responses that may themselves undermine democratic legitimacy, even when undertaken with the best intentions.

The Romanian Constitutional Court may have been right that Russian interference corrupted the election. They may have been wrong. They may have been partly right—Russia may have run influence operations that existed alongside domestic political dynamics that would have produced similar results anyway.

What is clear is that the decision to annul the election did not resolve Romania's political crisis. It may have deepened it. Georgescu's supporters did not disappear. Their grievances did not evaporate. And the precedent of judicial annulment now hangs over future Romanian elections.

A Mirror for Other Democracies

Romania is not unique. The dynamics visible in its cancelled election are playing out, in various forms, across the democratic world.

The United States has experienced bitter disputes over election integrity, with claims of fraud and foreign interference becoming routine features of the political landscape.

France has seen the rise of nationalist movements that mainstream parties struggle to defeat, leading to elaborate coalition-building designed to prevent outcomes rather than achieve positive goals.

The United Kingdom voted for Brexit in part because of sophisticated social media campaigns whose funding and origins remain contested.

Hungary and Poland have both experienced democratic backsliding under governments that rose to power through legitimate elections and then worked to entrench their positions.

Romania's experience adds another chapter to this unsettling pattern. A candidate rose through social media. Intelligence services raised alarms. Courts intervened. And now nobody is quite sure what legitimate democracy looks like in a world where information warfare is constant, platforms are powerful, and traditional institutions are struggling to keep pace.

The TikTok Messiah may or may not have been a Russian asset. But the millions of Romanians who voted for him were expressing something real about their country's politics. Whether their voices will ultimately be heard—and through what process—remains to be seen.