Poll predicts early elections would not solve Romania’s political deadlock Far-right isolationist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) would nearly double its weight in Parliament from 19.4% to 36.4% (after redistribution and corrected for the seats allocated to minorities), the Social Democrats (PSD) would lose ground from 27.4% to 24.6%, and a reformist coalition formed by PNL, USR, and UDMR would stagnate at 35.3% (from 35.6% currently) according to the latest poll carried out by CURS and published by Hotnews.ro . None of the radical far-right parties, such as SOS Romania and POT, would meet the threshold, with their voters apparently migrating to AUR. The poll holds, however, limited practical significance since the following political developments, primarily the no-confidence motion and the negotiations following the vote, will severely impact the electoral support of most of the parties.

Members of the Romanian Parliament part of the extremist, pro-Russian party SOS Romania, have begun the process of collecting signatures for the suspension from office of Nicușor Dan, according to the leader of the party, Diana Iovanovici-Șoșoacă . So far, 155 lawmakers out of the total 465 have signed for the initiative, Șoșoacă added, without specifying which party’s MPs have backed the suspension procedure.  “We were asked not to make the names of the people public because there is already a very big scandal in those respective parties,” Șoșoacă claimed on Monday, May 11, cited by Agerpres . She further explained that starting from May 8, more than 400,000 members and supporters of SOS Romania have expressed support for the dismissal of Nicușor Dan.