What Elections in Romania and Poland Say About Populism and the Press

In November, I wrote about a presidential election in Romania, and noted that much of the international coverage ahead of time had focused on George Simion, a far-right candidate; stories often cast him as “a threat to continued Romanian military assistance to neighboring Ukraine in the latter country’s war with Russia,” I wrote, and “also mentioned his support of Donald Trump, his background as a soccer hooligan, and his party’s giant Vlad the Impaler posters and slick TikTok videos.” In the end, however, Simion didn’t even make the second round of the election. The candidates who did qualify were Elena Lasconi, a moderate former TV journalist—and, shockingly, Călin Georgescu, an ultranationalist soil scientist who had gotten almost literally zero international attention ahead of the vote, and was not well-known domestically either, but surged late on thanks in no small part to a viral campaign on TikTok. A Romanian journalist called it “the first election where social media has been more influential than television. We have seen how TikTok can defeat mainstream media.”