Sunday saw three big national elections in Europe and in about 2.5 the far right took the L:
In Romania, Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan took 53.6 percent of the vote in the runoff against the far-right AUR Party’s leader George Simion, who had led the first round of a re-do of an election that had been annulled by the country’s Supreme Court over Russian fuckery, the BBC reports.
In Portugal, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro’s center-right Democratic Alliance came in first but are short of a majority, requiring the party to slap together a coalition. It’s not clear who came in second yet, but either way the Socialists lost ground to the white nationalist Chega party, and Chega may actually end up having taken second place once all the overseas vote is counted.
In Poland, liberal Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski took a narrow victory in the presidential election at 31.3 percent of the vote, but right wing historian Karol Nawrocki’s strong 29.5 percent second place finish has forced a June 1st runoff. The problem for Trzaskowski besides underperforming his polls by about 5 percent is that a lot of the now-eliminated losers were far-right maniacs, like thirdh-place finisher Slawomir Mentzen, who took 14.8 percent of the vote. Next at 6.3 percent was MP Grzegorz Braun, who in 2023 blew out a large menorah in the Parliament building’s lobby with a fire extinguisher. During a debate last month Braun said “Jews have far too much say in Polish affairs.”