Centre-Left Social Democrats Win Romanian Elections, Exit Polls

Romania's centre-left wing Social Democrat Party, PSD, won the country's legislative elections on Sunday, but failed to secure a parliamentary majority, leaving the door open for negotiations on forming a coalition with another parliamentary group.

According to the first exit poll released on Sunday evening, PSD managed to get 45.8 per cent of the votes in an election in which more than 19 million people were eligible to cast a ballot.

The second-biggest winner is the centre-right National Liberal Party, PNL, having scored 20.8 per cent of the votes, the polls show.

The newly established centrist Save Romania Union, USR, obtained 9.2 per cent across both chambers in the parliament, while leftist ALDE managed to get 6.5 per cent and the Democrat Hungarian Union in Romania, UDMR, 7 per cent.

The United Romania Party, a PSD splinter, and former president Traian Basescu's populist Popular Movement Party, PMP, remain below the 5-per-cent threshold needed to enter parliament.

The exit polls have a 1.7 per cent margin of error, according to the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy, IRES.

The official elections results will be available on Monday, the Central Electoral Bureau stated after the polls had closed.

Leading into the polls, the Social Democrats were the favourites, despite accusations of corruption after a night-club fire in Bucharest in October 2015 that left 64 dead. Following the tragedy, the Social Democrat government, lead by Victor Ponta, resigned in November 2015 following mass demonstrations and was replaced by a technocratic government backed by PNL.

However, in a country where one in four people are affected by poverty, electoral promises of wage hikes and tax cuts...

Continue reading on: