Far-right candidate George Simion still leads polls for Romanian president, close battle for second

The leader and presidential candidate of the far-right party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), George Simion, continues to lead in the race for president, according to a public opinion poll conducted for HotNews between April 17–22 by AtlasIntel.

The data show that Simion lost a significant portion of what he had gained over the past month. At the same time, he is narrowing the gap with every opponent in the scenario of a presidential runoff, showing that the far-right leader can become the next Romanian president.

According to the poll, George Simion, the candidate who claims to be the replacement for far-right pro-Russian politician Calin Georgescu after the rejection of his candidacy, is credited with 31.9% of votes. This means that after increasing by 3% points from March during April 10–13, the AUR candidate has lost half of that gain.

In second place is the PSD-PNL-UDMR candidate, Crin Antonescu, credited with 22.6% of the votes, down two points from nine days ago, when he had 24.7%.

Just 0.6% behind is independent candidate Nicușor Dan, the current mayor of Bucharest, at 22%, a slight increase from 21.2%. In fourth place is another independent, Victor Ponta, with 10.2%, up from 9.7%, while USR leader Elena Lasconi remains in fifth place with 5.5%, half a percentage point more than in the previous poll.

The AtlasIntel poll also outlines possible second-round scenarios. As before, George Simion would lose to all opponents except Victor Ponta. Still, Crin Antonescu’s lead over George Simion has shrunk from 12.9% to 5%. Elena Lasconi’s lead has narrowed from 3.5% to just 2%, and Nicușor Dan’s advantage over Simion has gone from 3.2% to 3%.

Meanwhile, in a Nicușor Dan vs. Crin Antonescu runoff, the latter would receive 31% of the vote compared to 28% for the current mayor of Bucharest, while the share of respondents who say “don’t know,” “won’t vote,” or would cast a null vote is the highest among all scenarios, 41%.

The survey comes as the main pro-European candidates, namely Crin Antonescu, Nicusor Dan, and Elena Lasconi, have argued their case for a “practical vote,” saying that they have the best chance of beating George Simion in the runoff.

The AtlasIntel poll was conducted with a sample of 3,701 respondents using the random digital recruitment method (Atlas RDR).