Romania’s 2024 elections: PSD attracted most mayors changing parties, report shows

The Social Democrat Party (PSD), part of the governing coalition with the National Liberal Party (PNL), has attracted most of the mayors that decided to change parties before this year’s local elections, a report by think-tank Expert Forum shows.

The PSD attracted 279 candidates, most of them from PNL (174) and the People's Movement Party PMP (27). It also lost 48 candidates.

In its turn, PNL attracted 99 candidates, most of them from PSD (39) and independents (21), while losing 188 candidates.

The opposition party Save Romania Union (USR) lost 26 mayors, more than half of them to PSD. Only one USR mayor left the party to join PNL.

The hard-right party AUR attracted nine mayors, three of them in Bacău county.

Most mayors changing parties were in the counties of Teleorman (25), Vâlcea (21), Buzău (20), Timiș and Caraș Severin (19 each). PSD received 23 mayors in Teleorman and 20 in Vâlcea, while PNL nine in Suceava and 8 in Giurgiu.

The report looked at whether mayors in office are still running in this year’s elections, and if they do so on behalf of the same party or not. It didn’t examine if the candidate was running for a different position or in another electoral district.

It covered 3,187 electoral districts, according to data published by the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP).

A total of 377 mayors (12%) in office no longer stand for election, and in 415 cases (13%), the party they represented in the past no longer corresponds to the current one. Most cases were found in communes (groups of villages), 3% in cities, and 6% in towns.

The full report is available here.

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