A person holds a flag as supporters wait for poll results, on the day of Romanian presidential election, outside the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) headquarters in Bucharest, Romania, May 4, 2025. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
BUCHAREST, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Romania's hard-right opposition party the Alliance for Uniting Romanians is towering over the four parties of the pro-European coalition government in popular support, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday, although no election is due until 2028.
AUR, the second-largest party in the country, led surveys throughout 2025 despite its leader George Simion ultimately losing a presidential election re-run last May.
The party opposes extending military aid to neighbouring Ukraine, is critical of the European Union's leadership and supportive of U.S. President Donald Trump's policies including on energy and immigration. Romania is a member of both the EU and NATO.
The latest survey, conducted by pollster INSCOP, showed that 40.9% of Romanians would vote for AUR, the highest level of support for a hard-right party in more than three decades.
The leftist Social Democrats (PSD), currently parliament's biggest party and a member of the ruling coalition, ranked a distant second with 18.2%.
The Liberal Party of Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan had 13.5% support. The other two ruling parties - the centre-right Save Romania Union (USR) and the ethnic Hungarian party UDMR - polled at 11.7% and 4.9%, respectively.
Romania's next general election is due in 2028.
The survey was conducted from January 12 to 15 and has a margin of error of 3.0%.
Romania re-ran a presidential election last year after it cancelled the original ballot in December 2024 on suspicion of Russian interference in favour of far-right frontrunner Calin Georgescu.
The cancelled vote plunged the country into its worst political crisis in decades, exposing its deep vulnerability to hybrid attacks and disinformation, dividing voters, crashing markets and threatening the country's investment-grade rating.
The broad coalition government which came to power after the subsequent ballot raised taxes and cut some state spending to help narrow the widest budget deficit gap in the EU.
While the measures helped keep Romania on the last rung of investment grade and unlocked EU funds, with the budget deficit expected to narrow to around 6% of economic output this year from more than 9% in 2024, they have also triggered protests and fuelled support for the opposition.
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
