With the two candidates in Romanian presidential elections, Traian Basescu and Mircea Geoana, claiming victory following preliminary exit polls announced at 9 p.m. local time tonight, what happens next? The situation is similar to the 2004 presidential elections, when similar results occurred.
1. At 11 p.m. tonight, the four opinion poll institutes are due to present results for 9 p.m. (end of voting day)
2. All night, the campaign staff of both Mircea Geoana and Traian Basescu would count the votes simultaneously
3. On Monday morning, the Central Electoral Office is due to announce the first partial official results
Two issues of major influence may affect the official results:
votes registered between 7 and 9 p.m. (those not included in exit polls announced on TV stations at 9 p.m.)
votes of Romanian citizens abroad (some 108,000 Romanians cast their votes abroad by 7 p.m.). The experience of previous polls show that the vote of the Diaspora leans heavily towards PDL/Basescu
According to the two factors the results may suffer changes.
