Cav's Place

I should start by saying that this post should probably contain a lot of links, but it won’t contain any. There would be too many articles to choose from if I were to start searching, each with its own focus and perhaps even bias, so I prefer to just post how I see things and let any potential readers who might somehow be interested search and select according to their own preferences and desires.

Sunday was the second round of the Romanian presidential elections, the opponents being incumbent president Traian Basescu, supported by the Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL), and the president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Mircea Geoana. As all the other parties united in an effort to get rid of Basescu, Geoana also enjoyed the official support of PNL, UDMR, PRM, PNG, PNTCD and PAS, as well as the unofficial support of the Greens, which angered me terribly. On top of that, the major private media groups maintained and even worsened their usual obviously hostile attitude towards Basescu during the campaign.
Basescu won the first round with 32.45% and Geoana was second with 31.15%, but all the support received from the other candidates helped Geoana to an 8% lead, 54% to 46%, in a poll published between the two rounds of elections. The accuracy of that poll can be disputed, but I don’t doubt that he was indeed leading at the time and only lost that lead right at the end, after participating in the televised debate. Actually, exit polls can’t exactly be accused of wrongly saying that he’ll win because he did win, albeit by a very small margin, inside the country, and the votes coming from the Romanians living abroad made Basescu come out on top overall.

But let me start from the beginning. You could find the partial results of exit polls on-line during the day, since it’s illegal to broadcast them on TV or radio but there’s no such law concerning the Internet. Those results showed an obvious bias, depending on which TV station would be broadcasting it. But the most interesting moment was around 7 PM, when the results for 5 PM were posted. The site that I was checking, belonging to one of the TV stations that has known ties to PSD and an obviously hostile attitude towards Basescu, stopped updating the results of all four polls, deciding to focus just on the two that gave Mircea Geoana the best results. In addition, and this is the key part, those same two polls were being quoted on the site of a magazine belonging to the same media group, and the numbers appearing on these two sites as the results at 5 PM were different. The magazine’s site was listing Geoana as leading with 51.2% and 52.0%, respectively, while the other site was listing him leading with 52.5% in both polls. At the same time, a mere 50.4% for Geoana at 4 PM was rumored in other places, and it’s known from past elections that PSD’s share tends to drop later in the day.
Then it started getting really interesting. At 9 PM, the polls closed and the TV stations broadcasted the exit poll results for 7 PM. The two TV stations with known ties to PSD said 51.6% and 51.2%, respectively, for Geoana, the state-owned TV station said 50.8%, also for Geoana, while the one TV station with a known bias towards Basescu claimed a deadlock, 50.0% for each candidate. That prompted both candidates to give victory speeches. Basescu started his before the exit poll results were displayed, calmly warning his supporters that the numbers they’re about to see are fake, because PSD influenced at least two of the results so Geoana will have at least 0.5% added to his score, assuring them that he won “just like in 2004” and urging them to be calm and wait for the official results. Geoana, on the other hand, was extremely happy when he saw the numbers on the screen and gave an enthusiastic, and lengthy, victory speech.
Around 11 PM, the final exit poll results were made public. In the same order as before, they were 51.2%, 51.0% and 50.7% for Geoana, and 50.4% for Basescu. But the first partial parallel count results from the parties directly involved came just before that time, when PDL claimed that Basescu is leading with about 50.7% and PSD that Geoana has “somewhat more than the 51.6% estimated by the exit poll” after counting 15% of votes.
Some time later, PNL announced that, according to their own parallel count, Geoana is leading with 51.4% after counting 20% of the votes. But that was the only real announcement they made that night, only quietly releasing a brief statement a couple of hours later, saying that Geoana is still leading with the same 51.4% after they counted 41% of votes, then being completely silent until morning.
The rest of the night was spent by PDL and PSD trading conflicting parallel count results, as follows: PDL were the first ones to make another announcement, claiming that Basescu had just a little under 50.4% of votes after the vast majority of votes had been counted. Then they made another announcement, saying that Basescu was marginally leading, with 50.03%, after counting 99% of votes. PSD answered that immediately, saying that “not even NASA could count that fast”, and claiming that, according to their own parallel count, which was then at 35%, Geoana had 51.1% of votes. Then, close to 3 AM, PDL announced that Basescu was leading with 50.14% and that the only votes they couldn’t already count were those cast by some of the Romanians living abroad, especially in the Americas, where the polls were still open at that time. They also invited PSD to some talks about the most effective methods of parallel counting of votes, as a reply to the claims that nobody could count that fast, and said they’ll make the final results of their parallel count public around 11 AM. PSD countered by saying that their own count was at 62% and Geoana was still leading, with 50.8%. During all this time, members and supporters of PSD and PNL, including Mircea Geoana, were celebrating their victory.
Around 3:30 AM, a very tired, but also very happy, Basescu left PDL headquarters, once again stating that he won. No further announcements were made until morning, which was to be expected in PDL’s case, but is quite surprising when it comes to PSD, since they still had a lot to say… Unless they found out things that they weren’t willing to make public, that is.
Around 5 AM I went to bed, not before thinking that PSD should be releasing another statement, in the early hours of the morning, claiming that Geoana had about 50.3% after counting about 80% of the votes, and wondering if they’d notice the pattern and admit the possibility of defeat. Later I learned that the first part of my estimate was perfectly accurate, but that they still didn’t admit that they could have lost the elections. PDL did keep their word, though, and released the final results of their parallel count, which gave Basescu 50.33%. I don’t know the exact time of this announcement, but it was at some point during the morning.
At 8 AM, the first official results were published, and they showed Traian Basescu leading, with 50.43%, after 95.4% of votes had been counted. As further results trickled in, around 11 AM, a visibly depressed Geoana returned to PSD headquarters, refusing to answer any questions. The tension was mounting and PSD was starting to claim that Basescu won by fraud.
At 3 PM, the provisional final official results were announced and they confirmed PDL’s parallel count. Basescu obtained 50.33% of votes, defeating Geoana by exactly 70048 votes. This victory was thanks to the Romanians who voted abroad, because Geoana received 14738 votes more than Basescu inside the country, but only 31045 out of the 146876 votes from abroad. I should point out that Basescu’s clear victory abroad is no surprise, because he even obtained well over 50% there in the first round, competing against 11 others. The number of voters could be a little surprising, because it’s about 50% higher than the one from the first round, but it was to be expected because those people knew their votes would truly matter this time and various sources stated throughout that day that the Romanians living abroad were encouraging and helping each other to vote, to have their say.

What I want to point out is that PDL’s parallel count was proven right and the exit polls were proven wrong twice before: Once was during the 2004 presidential elections, when the exit polls said Adrian Nastase (also from PSD) was the winner, but it actually was Traian Basescu, a fact that PSD fairly admitted at the time. The second time was during last year’s parliamentary’s elections, when the exit polls said PSD had about 3% over PDL, but the official results showed a negligible overall difference and PDL actually won the most seats. In 2004, PSD had the government. In 2008, PNL had it, with a silent support from PSD. So I feel that any accusations that this caretaker PDL government could have arranged things to go their way are countered by the fact that the same thing happened twice before, when they couldn’t have been accused of this. The only difference is that PSD accepted the results the first two times, albeit more grudgingly last year, but this time they decided to challenge them.
I also want to remind people of the interesting difference between 5 PM exit poll results, depending on who quoted them. On top of that, there was an interesting moment yesterday. The one person who asked for patience and caution Sunday night on the TV station that gave the most optimistic exit poll results for Geoana, though she works there and the policy quite obviously appeared to be a different one, was asked by one of their news anchors why did she do that, what did she know that others didn’t. She answered that on one hand she had seen this before and knew the effectiveness and accuracy of PDL’s parallel counting system, and on the other hand she has various sources, as any good journalist, and knew how things really stood with the exit polls. I don’t know how much she’s risking for saying that, but I think it’s about as close to confirming Basescu’s claim about PSD interfering with the exit polls as you can get without saying it in quite so many words.

Now PSD has filed an official complaint and is asking for the elections to be repeated, because they claim that they have evidence of 136000 illegal votes, which could obviously change the result. The question is how many of those votes, if indeed they were somehow illegal, were for Basescu and how many were for Geoana. Because there’s no way to tell that, and if you can come up with so many names so fast it can be assumed that you already knew where to look, which may mean that they’re sacrificing their own people to end up with the required number to back their claim. I support this statement with a quote from an important member of PSD who let it slip yesterday that “PDL’s theft and fraud machine […] worked better” and then refused to answer the question which obviously followed, when a reporter asked if that choice of words means that they have a “theft and fraud machine” of their own.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that PDL stole some votes, but I’m certain that PSD did the same. And considering the fact that PSD is still the largest party in Romania and that each electoral committee contained just one person from each party, which meant one person from PDL alone among those from PSD, PNL, UDMR, PRM, PNG and sometimes even some from the smaller parties as well, I find it rather hard to believe that PDL stole more than PSD. And, either way, the fact remains that I see PSD as clearly the greater evil, so until an option that’d actually be good would present itself I have to support those who somehow manage to keep PSD away.
But let’s wait and see how this will play out…