Romania is voting for president in the second round today. The two candidates competing for the seat in the Cotroceni Palace are the leader of the nationalist party "Alliance for the Unity of Romanians" Gheorghe Simion and the independent candidate and current mayor of Bucharest Nicosor Dan, BTA reported.
Thirty-eight-year-old Gheorghe Simion, chairman of the second-largest parliamentary party and the largest opposition force, won the first round convincingly on May 4 with about 40.96 percent of the vote. Far behind him, with 20.99 percent, came 55-year-old Nicosor Dan.
Sociological surveys, published a few days before the run-off, gave a tie or almost tie between the two candidates.
There are a total of 18,979 polling stations in the country, and 965 abroad. Election day begins at 7:00 a.m. local (and Bulgarian) time and will end at 9:00 p.m. Voting abroad, which lasts three days, began on Friday.
According to data from the Permanent Electoral Authority, the total number of voters registered on the permanent electoral lists is 17,988,218 people. The number of Romanians with an address abroad who are entitled to vote is 1,016,327.
The presidential elections in Romania are being held for the second time, after the Constitutional Court annulled the first round held in November in December last year and ordered the electoral process to start over. The cancellation of the elections threw the country in the worst political crisis in decades, observers note.