Frenchwoman wins race for mayor in Bucharest's richest district after fierce battle and fraud allegations

French-born Clotilde Armand (opening photo) won the elections for mayor in Bucharest's District 1 after a fierce battle with incumbent Social Democrat mayor Daniel Tudorache. Fraud allegations on both sides overshadowed the vote result. And, indeed, looking at the numbers, something doesn't add up in District 1. The surprise is not that Clotilde Armand won, but that the margin she had on her opponent was so thin.

The centralized partial results available on the Permanent Electoral Authority's website show that Clotilde Armand got 36,455 votes from District 1 residents (40.9%), whereas Daniel Tudorache got 35,451 votes (39.8% of the total). The difference between them is thus only 1,000 votes or one percentage point.

However, the numbers are not consistent with the results of the other three ballots (for the Local Council, Bucharest mayor, and Bucharest General Council).

Clotilde Armand ran in the local elections backed by a center-right alliance made of USR-PLUS and the National Liberal Party (PNL). The same coalition supported Nicusor Dan in the race for Bucharest mayor. Nicusor Dan received 42,611 votes in District 1 (or 47.6% of the total), whereas the Social Democrat candidate – incumbent mayor Gabriela Firea got 30,894 votes (34.5% of the total). This results in a difference of 11,700 votes (13.2 pp) in favor of the center-right candidate.

Moreover, 43,531 District 1 voters (48.9% of the total) went with either USR-PLUS or PNL for the Local Council, compared to 27,648 voters (31.1%) for PSD. The difference, in this case, is 15,800 votes (17.8 pp). Simultaneously, 44,279 District 1 residents (49.8% of the total voters) voted USR-PLUS or PNL for the Bucharest General Council, and 27,123 (30.5%) voted for PSD. Here, the gap is even higher – 17.156 votes (19.3 pp).

Thus, over 42,500 District 1 inhabitants consistently voted for USR-PLUS and PNL in three ballots, but at least 6,000 of them chose not to support the alliance's candidate for District mayor. Meanwhile, the incumbent mayor got close to 8,000 votes more than the party he represents.

The final results of the District 1 mayor elections are also much tighter than the exit-poll results announced after the voting closed on Sunday evening. Clotilde Armand scored 48% in the exit poll, compared to Tudorache's 36.5%. While the exit poll results in Bucharest were slightly titled towards the center-right candidates (the scores indicated were higher than the official scores after the counting), they indicated rather correctly the scores of the PSD candidates and the winners.

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