THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF 2014 BURSA was the first to announce that Iohannis will win the presidential elections

In BURSA, sociologist Alin Teodorescu forecasted Klaus Iohannis would be the winner, one week prior to the second round of the presidential elections.

On November 10th, Alin Teodorescu predicted that in the current elections there will be a similar turn of events to the one that happened in 2004, when the candidate that came out second in the first round won the elections in the second.

The sociologist (who self-suspended himself from the PSD, former deputy and chancellor minister in the cabinet of Prime-minister Adrian Năstase) told us that the result of the second round of elections was known for several months now: "Look at what has happened in the elections of 2004 and you will understand what is going to happen on November 16th. (...)Victor Ponta will go into the second round, as a winner, but from there, he will be defeated by whoever presents themselves as the sole candidate of the opposition".

Indeed, the reversal which was predicted only by Alin Teodorescu happened. In fact, this reversal was much more spectacular than it was in 2004. According to the numbers, Klaus Iohannis has won an additional 3,361,419 votes, between the first and the second round, whereas Victor Ponta only won 1,375,004 votes.

Alin Teodorescu told us yesterday: "Victor Ponta's defeat was inscribed in the sociological structure of the Romanian electorate. What nobody predicted was that the «extreme» attitude of Victor Ponta will generate an increase in the voter turnout of approximately 1.7 million people, of which 75% would vote against him".

He claims that in Romania, the status that the position of prime-minister has makes it more likely for a candidate that holds it to lose if they decide to run for president, rather than win: "When a prime-minister enters the race for the Cotroceni palace, their odds of success are harder to measure in the polls, than those of any other candidates. The blame for the failure in the second round lies with Victor Ponta himself, because he disbanded the USL (ed. note: the Social Liberal Union), he drove Crin Antonescu away and engaged in the race for Cotroceni, from the position of prime-minister".

The sociologist considers that the defeat of Victor Ponta was also caused by the electoral handouts which the current prime-minister made during the campaign, his attempt to halt the vote in the diaspora, as well as the fact that Victor Ponta "lied" to the voters that his main opponent, Klaus Iohannis, would implement pension cuts, once he gets to Cotroceni.

Alin Teodorescu considers that the statements made yesterday by PSD senator Dan Şova, who said that executive president of the PSD, Liviu Dragnea, who led the two failed electoral campaigns (the campaign of Mircea Geoană in 2009, and that of Victor Ponta in 2014), are not conclusive. The sociologist wanted to mention that Liviu Dragnea has coordinated not two failed campaigns, like Dan Şova said, but three, because the 2012 campaign to have president Traian Băsescu dismissed also failed.

• The smoldering fire within the PSD

Another thing that BURSA found out before the second round of the presidential elections was that opinions in the PSD were not cohesive at all and it published the statements of the realistic voices of the party, who could feel that a failure was coming.

Octavian Ştireanu, the presidential advisor of Ion Iliescu between 2000 and 2004, told us that the political sinecures that Victor Ponta gave some people outside his own party show that he was turning his back on the party that helped make him successful, in order to build an individual career.

The night of the first round of the presidential election, Ion Iliescu, the honorary president of the PSD, allegedly accused Liviu Dragnea and Victor Ponta of having turned the PSD into a monster and that, if the party lost the presidential elections, it would be "pulverized".

Sociologist Alin Teodorescu also told us that following the failure of the elections, he hopes that the PSD would not dissolve.

In the time between the two rounds of the presidential election, BURSA wrote, quoting sources from the PSD, that the victory of Victor Ponta was in doubt, in spite of the electoral "handouts" and the Ordinance issued by Dragnea, which allowed 400 mayors to switch their allegiances and join the PSD.