Propagation: Seeds & scions (2)

2 ideas sprouting »

1. Actually, one of the four exit polls correctly forecast the runoff vote’s outcome to within 0.1%.

   At any rate, it’s not only the closest-ever outcome of a Romanian presidential election, but also the first time that a presidential runoff in Romania registers a higher voter turnout rate (58%) than the first round (54.4%). Moreover, the number of votes cast in special polling stations (for citizens who are away from their place of residence on election day) appears to be sharply up once more, at least in Bucharest and all but one of the eight counties for which detailed reports are available so far.

   Finally, I put up a page on Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Romania on my website, which has 2009 presidential election results, including nationwide runoff vote totals; for Romanian election statistics on events held prior to 2004 (which I don’t have on my site as of yet), one print source I’d recommend is Parties and Elections in New European Democracies by Richard Rose & Neil Munro.

   Seed planted by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera — 07 December 2009 @ 18:55

2. In the ongoing political crisis in Romania, President Traian Basescu may have narrowly avoided being impeached, as reported in Spiegel Online (with a curious photoreference to the Olympics), but we won’t know for sure until mid-September.

   It’s hard to argue with Dimitar Bechev’s assertion (quoted by Spiegel)that “Romania is divided into two political tribes. It isn’t a principled political disagreement, it is a dirty war. And it has become very personal.” But it’s the manner of Basescu’s survival which I thought relevant for F&V.

   It’s clear that the referendum vote was overwhelmingly in favour of impeachment. According to the final report (PDF in Romanian) of the Central Electoral Bureau, a resounding 87.52% of the voters chose “Da” (Yes). But on the face of it, the referendum cannot succeed because the turnout was only 46.24%, a little under the 50% required by Romanian law. Basescu had urged his supporters to abstain, which was clearly a better strategy than voting against impeachment. Indeed, had a few more fervent supporters turned out to express that support, they could have ended up allowing the referendum to succeed.

   But, as Nine O’Clock reports, the question is still to be determined by the Constitutional Court, which has demanded that the government produce the voters lists used to compute the turnout. Premier Victor Ponta alleges that the actual voting population of Romania is only 16,527,971, not the 18,292,464 on the BEC’s final report, in which case the turnout of 8,459,053 would be just enough to declare the referendum valid.

   Seed planted by rici — 02 August 2012 @ 21:31

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