[punkspider]

From what I've come to understand:

- Romania's voting system is in 2 rounds, and he won the first. The second is in ~2 days.

- Most people never heard of him up until 2 weeks before the first round, when an aggressive Tiktok campaign started. Polymarket.com didn't include him in their system. Many were taken by surprise.

- Many videos promoting him on Tiktok weren't marked as being propaganda, and thus allowed to go viral.

- He claims 0 campaign spending and that it's thanks to volunteers.

- Many who voted for him aren't into politics, and liked the way he presented himself.

- His content is a mix of populist, nationalist, anti-establishment, and mostly contain patriotic and emotional narratives to connect to viewers.

- Larger cities voted for the pro-western candidate

- He's made some controversial statements, such as the moon landing being fake, covid denying (am not sure to what extent), 5G conspiracy, denying climate change (those being just a few)

Everyone's talking about him. I'm curious how it will turn out and to see how the quote "there's no such thing as bad publicity" fares in this case.

[throw_pm23]

That's an excellent summary. I'd add: - Someone so unexpectedly winning the first round creates its own myth, and people tend to join such candidates "to be on the winner's side", so he seemed to have a solid chance at winning the second round too.