This weekend Romanians will decide on a new parliament. We spoke with sociologist Dumitru Sandu (University of Bucharest), who has been analysing elections in Romanian for thirty years, and asked him to predict the outcome of the parliamentary elections.
Perhaps we can start with the local elections on September 27. You’ve been analysing voter data, exit polls, surveys. Every election has a certain surprise element and a certain confirmation of voting patterns based on demographic characteristics, on intentions based on experiences in the diaspora, etc. What to you was surprising, and what was a confirmation of what you already knew in terms of voting patterns in earlier elections?
Dumitru Sandu (DS): I have to disappoint you. Because nothing except some details surprised me in the local elections. It’s a good reference point, to better understand the changes in voting patterns. I’d like to start from August 2018, the huge anti-government protest. What happened that moment cast its shadow over the referendum in October 2018, the European and presidential elections last year, parliamentary voting and the upcoming election. Surveys show that there is a changing public attitude towards public goods, moving away from salaries and pensions. People are much more interested in the quality of the roads, quality of the health system now.
And this naturally affects people’s political preferences?
DS: It’s very likely that average Romanians, especially those from large cities, those that are younger, those that are having connections abroad — are much more interested in economic competitiveness of Romanian enterprises, quality of roads and the public administration. From this perspective, I expected the outcome of the local elections in September, the ranking of the political parties.
“The National Liberal Party (PNL) will place first, as in the local elections and European elections.”
And what are your predictions for the December 6 elections?
DS: The upcoming parliamentary elections will see the same trend that started with the European elections in May 2019 and the local elections in September. We can do predictions by combining all these in a different way from what you see in the Romanian media, and not give you predictions in percentages but hierarchies, rankings. The National Liberal Party (PNL) will place first, as in the local elections and European elections. In second place, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), around seven to 10 percentage points behind the PNL. The Save Romania Union (USR)-PLUS alliance and PSD finish very close.
I’m not only a sociologist, I’m also statistician, as you know, and it’s risky to give one figure, for example say that the PNL will get 35% of the vote. We always have to take a margin of error into account. But, I will take a risk, and predict that USR-PLUS will end up with two or three percentage points more than the PSD.
It’s difficult to compare USR-PLUS with the PSD because they are getting their support from very different sources. There will be huge support, like in Moldova, for the USR from the diaspora. That is not measured by the polls. Secondly, I have good reasons to assume that across all of the communes and all the cities in Romania that are having a large number of their citizens abroad, they could be considered as a mirror of the mentality of the diaspora, because simply they are relatives or their friends from abroad are forming the mentality here. And we know for sure, from the local elections, for example, but not only for them, that in localities where the number of people abroad is large, Romanians voted predominantly for the USR. So, I expect to have a continuation of the same trend.
“There will be huge support for the USR from the diaspora. That is not measured by the polls.”
But what about the campaigns, the impact of the corona measures on the (im)popularity of PNL, PSD and USR-PLUS?
DS: Another trend I’m perceiving — and this is a hypothesis, I do not have figures — is that what media are reporting or what politicians are saying in the run-up to the elections matters less. Communities have made up their mind. There is a huge stratification, a function of how poor, how rich, or how informed, how uninformed are the local communities. Nobody can change that overnight. Nobody, no media, no politicians.
Allow me to return to the empirical results from the last elections. I do have the figures in front of me. I expected the USR and PNL to be very close in communities of the same development level. It wasn’t like this. Very poor communities vote for the PSD and for a party that originated from the PSD, PRO Romania. Clearly, the figures are telling us that poor people from poor communities, poor communities — not poor people, poor communities — are voting especially for left-oriented parties. The PNL is somewhere between communities that vote for the PSD and for the USR, they are somewhere in the middle. The PNL is much closer to the Party of Popular Movement (PMP). So it was a small surprise to find PNL not in the same communities with the USR, but with the PMP.
Which counties you think will be decisive for Sunday’s election outcome?
DS: Salaj, Suceava, Neamț, Vrancea, Tulcea and Vâlcea are six counties I put into the category of the undecided vote. The majority of communities were voting in very close percentages for both PNL and PSD, especially in Moldavia. It’s a sign of change. My expectations for all these six counties is that they will vote predominantly in the liberal direction. But again, I’m relying much more on historical data than survey data.
There is one question that is basic in all the polls but that is systematically neglected in the published surveys. Normally, you ask if the elections will come in one month, what would be the party the respondent would vote for. That’s a good basis for prediction. But the second basic question — what will be the party that you can see others votes for — nobody publishes. In spite of the fact that polling firms know that this is important, because there are frequent situations in which respondents hesitate to tell the interviewer her or his voting preferences, but are much more inclined to talk about the preferences of others.
“Local communities do not forget who they voted for one year, two years, three years before.”
You are looking at historical trends, which inform your predictions, but these are, of course, unusual elections. To what extent do you think the Corona pandemic will will have an influence on the voter turnout and possibly the election outcome?
DS: One of the possible outcomes is that vulnerable people — let’s say 70, 75 year olds, with a medium or higher education — who did vote in the local elections in September, will not go to the polls on Sunday. That will have an effect on the elections results.
Let me point out one more important factor: the president. Klaus Iohannis is a rather popular and important political actor simply because communities that voted for him one year ago in the presidential elections, voted PNL and USR in the local elections. He gave people an incentive to vote. And local communities do not forget who they voted for one year, two years, three years before.
[This interview has been abbreviated and edited for clarity.]
