The Fast Rise of Populist Radical Right Parties: Evidence from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians

Abstract

How did the new Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) obtain 9% of the vote in the 2020 Romanian general elections? This article explores the fast rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties by examining the support for the AUR at the locality level in Romania during the coronavirus crisis. The AUR's discourse combined populism, nationalism and anti-masking rhetoric. The findings show great variation across the 3,181 localities, from 0% to 50% support for the AUR, and highlight the significant influence of local cultural and political factors, while economic explanations were not confirmed. The vote for the AUR was high in localities with low ethnic diversity and low voter turnout. This research underscores that national-level explanations obscure important dynamics of PRR support that take place at the subnational level. The rise of the AUR is important beyond the Romanian and European contexts and emphasizes the significance of local responses to global crises.

Romania is a distinctive case because populist radical right (PRR) parties were absent from the parliament for nearly nine years, from 2008 to 2012 and again from 2015 to 2020. After the decline of the Greater Romania Party (PRM) in 2008, the People's Party–Dan Diaconescu (PP-DD) made a brief parliamentary appearance in 2012 but collapsed before the end of the term. The lack of parliamentary continuity for right-wing populism places Romania in contrast with most European countries, where the global recession has led to increased support for the PRR, leading some scholars to call the last 15 years the ‘populist momentum’ (Halikiopoulou 2018).

The return of PRR parties in Romania took place in the 2020 parliamentary elections, when the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR, which means ‘Gold’) ranked fourth, winning over 9% of the votes for both chambers: 33 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 14 seats in the Senate (Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă 2020). This article explores the rapid rise of the AUR during the COVID-19 crisis, which was not only a severe health crisis, but also led to a 3.9% economic decline and an increase from 4% to 4.9% in the unemployment rate from 2019 to 2020 (National Institute of Statistics 2021a, 2021b). Using the three attributes developed by Cas Mudde (2007) – nativism, populism and authoritarianism – the AUR can be classified as a PRR party. Through a combination of nationalism, populism, anti-governmental and anti-masking rhetoric, the AUR portrayed itself as an attractive alternative to the corrupt and inefficient elite. The AUR seized the new divisions created by the pandemic and reignited old tensions about ethnic minorities and the territories lost by Romania in World War II.

While there is a growing literature on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on PRR parties, most studies have centred on the Western party systems and established parties. Fewer studies examine Central and Eastern European (CEE) parties and the rise of a new PRR. Moreover, the literature is inconclusive regarding the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the success of the PRR. In a review article, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser and Paul Taggart (2024) highlight that the pandemic did not alter the success of PRR parties in major ways, but there are large differences in how the PRR parties responded to the crisis. This article attempts to contribute to the literature in three ways: (1) by helping us understand how the COVID-19 pandemic helped the rapid rise of a new PRR party; (2) by examining the response of the PRR to the pandemic; and (3) by studying the impact of subnational factors on support for the PRR.

First, I review the main economic, political and cultural theories on the rise of PRR parties. Second, I analyse the ascent of the AUR in Romania during the coronavirus pandemic and discuss the relevance of theoretical approaches. Third, I test the impact of economic, political and cultural explanations on the electoral support for the AUR on 3,181 localities (towns and villages) in Romania using two alternative hierarchical models. In the last part, I discuss the role that local factors played in the support for the AUR and the future implications for the consolidation of the party.

The rise of the populist radical right: Economic, political and cultural factors

Populism is an ideology that presents society in a dichotomic way: people versus the elite (Mudde 2004). In the populist worldview, society's ills are caused by the corruption of elites (Betz 2018). Populism relies on the mobilization of grievances towards mainstream parties by the people who feel left out (Golder 2016); several authors have noted that populism requires both popular mobilization of marginalized groups and populist rhetoric to give voice to their grievances (e.g. Betz 2018; Jansen 2011). No two populist parties are alike ideologically beyond their anti-elite core, and many PRR parties defy ideological characterization because they may combine elements of both the left and the right. The wave of the PRR following the 2008 Great Recession attests to the mix of traditional right-wing positions of nationalism – anti-minority, anti-immigrant, social conservatism – and authoritarianism with support for the working class and welfare policies (Enggist and Pinggera 2021).

A vast body of literature links populism to the politics of grievances (e.g. Betz 2018; Golder 2016; Kriesi 2014). Grievances capture the demand side of the PRR and provide economic, political and cultural explanations for its origins and manifestations. Supply-side factors focus on the dynamics of the party competition and the characteristics of PRR parties that allow their development (Table 1). Demand and supply factors do not act in isolation from each other, as Matt Golder observes (2016). The presence of demand translates into the development of a new PRR party only if the party competition structure allows it and if the party develops into a professional organization (Golder 2016).

Table 1. The Populist Radical Right: Economic, Political and Cultural Factors

Economic theories

Many studies argue that the PRR is a reaction to disruptive changes in the economic or social structure of a society (De Vreese et al. 2018; Guiso et al. 2019; Mudde 2004; Noury and Roland 2020). Such changes have been the result of three decades of neoliberalism and globalization, culminating in the Great Recession of 2008 (Table 1). Across Europe, they resulted in labour market dislocations and massive job losses in manufacturing, replaced by less secure jobs with lower salaries in services, and increased competition for jobs (Guiso et al. 2019). In CEE, the post-2008 economic crisis was accompanied by a substantial decline in work migration within the EU. Particularly affected were Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, new EU members with a large migrant workforce dependent on jobs in Western Europe (Chrisafis 2017). The post-recession economic recovery has faced CEE workers with increased competition for EU jobs from large numbers of migrants from China, India and other non-EU countries, and Syrian refugees (Chrisafis 2017; Koehler et al. 2010).

PRR parties have capitalized on the economic disruptions and resulting economic anxiety, offering ambiguous economic policies that combine elements of the right and the left. For instance, the Hungarian Fidesz has shifted economic policies to the left to capture traditional left voters (Bayer 2018). Economic theories would explain why in Romania, a country that has benefited from economic integration with the EU and work migration to other EU countries, the effects of the Great Recession and the COVID-19 crisis of 2020 have been felt particularly strongly, being multiplied by the regional economic downturn.

Political theories

A second theoretical approach examines populism from the perspective of political dissatisfaction, as a crisis of representation that makes various segments of society feel left out of the political process (demand side, Table 1). Several scholars have argued that support for populism comes from the unrepresented or underrepresented (e.g. Malkopoulou 2020; Noury and Roland 2020). In democracies, the growing technocratic nature of governance and the constraints of globalization and neoliberal policies have reduced the policy options of both the left and the right and have decreased the ideological and representative functions of political parties (Kriesi 2014). Particularly in the EU, the gap between the citizens and the representative European institutions has widened, notably between 2010 and 2020, because of the euro, and the refugee and COVID-19 crises. The void in representation has been filled by the PRR (Kriesi 2014), who advance strong leadership and authoritarian solutions to crises. An example is Hungary, where Viktor Orban imposed a state of emergency in March 2020, which has been extended multiple times (Batory 2024).

On the supply side (Table 1), PRR parties do not just fill a void; they may change the structure of party competition by seizing issues that cross-cut existing divisions and becoming policy entrepreneurs (De Vries and Hobolt 2022). PRR parties may advance or reframe issues that the mainstream parties shy away from (De Vries and Hobolt 2022), which may lead to an increase in voter turnout through a mobilization of previously unengaged voters (Leininger and Meijers 2021; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017: 80–86).

However, the connection between the vote for the PRR and voter turnout is not straightforward. Recent studies suggest that there is an inverse relationship between the PRR and voter turnout that may be influenced by the presence of barriers to voting which have a differential impact on different parties. Robert Bohrer et al. (2000) found that increased turnout because of a lowering of barriers to voting favoured left parties and adversely affected nationalist parties. Conversely, Uwe Remer-Bollow et al. (2019) showed that PRR parties benefited from low turnout, which affects mostly groups with low socioeconomic means.

Voting during the pandemic mostly resembles the latter scenario, because people's fear of infection and government-imposed restrictions created a barrier to participation. Matteo Picchio and Raffaella Santolini (2022) found that voter turnout in local elections in Italy declined with the intensity of the health crisis in 2020. Tania Fernandez-Navia et al. (2021) obtained a similar result in the 2020 regional elections in the Basque Country and showed that nationalist parties benefited substantially from the pandemic. Across Europe, parties' positions differed in how they portrayed the severity of COVID-19 and how they viewed the government-imposed restrictions. Many PRR leaders downplayed the gravity of the health crisis and encouraged people to disregard masking mandates and lockdowns, including Donald Trump in the US, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Marine Le Pen in France and Alice Weidel in Germany (Rovira Kaltwasser and Taggart 2024). As Kevin Arceneaux et al. (2020) show, individuals were more likely to follow cues about the pandemic from the party they favoured. The supporters of the PRR were inclined to disregard the health risks and turn out to vote in larger numbers than the voters of the mainstream parties.

Cultural theories

Cultural perspectives contend that the PRR is a result of a cultural backlash by socially conservative groups against cultural changes in societies, such as the erosion of traditional national, ethnic and religious identities (Mudde 2004; Noury and Roland 2020). In CEE, the recent migration and refugee crises have increased the anxiety generated by the replacement of materialist values with post-materialist values during the transition to democracy (Minkenberg 2002) (demand side, Table 1). Appealing to these concerns, many PRR leaders advance nationalism and advocate a return to an ideal society (Noury and Roland 2020). Across the world, political leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and Recep Erdogan in Turkey share a nationalist discourse that gives the nation an ethnic rather than a civic meaning, excluding ethnic minorities and immigrants, who are seen as a threat to national identity (Noury and Roland 2020). Ethnic nationalism may often include promises to restore a glorious past and expansionist policies.

In Western Europe, opposition to immigration and multiculturalism features prominently on the political agenda of most PRR parties, closely related to the EU's eastward enlargement and the ensuing increase in work migration from CEE, the global recession and the Syrian and Ukrainian refugee crises. In CEE, where immigration has been lower, PRR parties have targeted ethnic minorities and made revisionist territorial claims (Halikiopoulou 2018; Soare and Tufiş 2018). The Attack Party in Bulgaria, for instance, has scapegoated the Turkish and the Roma minorities, and the AUR is anti-Hungarian minority in Romania. In Hungary, Fidesz promotes exclusionary policies and a return to pre-World War I Greater Hungary (Leff and Armeanu 2017). As Golder (2016) observes, based on Benedict Anderson's theory of ‘imagined communities’ (1991), the ‘people’ in the PRR discourse are not real but imagined, and so are their enemies. Thus, the exclusionary rhetoric is likely to be more effective with the individuals who have low exposure to ethnic diversity and multiculturalism. Lenka Bustikova (2014), for instance, found that in Eastern Europe far-right parties do better where the size of the minority group is small.

The economic, political and cultural factors reinforce each other. Economic difficulties and associated anxiety are frequently linked with anti-minority and anti-immigrant feelings, particularly when minorities achieve electoral success (Bustikova 2014), and may lead the PRR to promote welfare chauvinism (Noury and Roland 2020). Dissatisfaction with the economy may give rise to a belief that mainstream political parties and democracy are working to the detriment of the people (Guiso et al. 2019). Cultural anxiety following migration and refugee crises may lead to dissatisfaction with how the mainstream parties represent traditional identities and values (Kriesi 2014).

The AUR and the populist radical right

The electoral success of the AUR was facilitated by the COVID-19 turmoil and highlights the impact of crises on support for the PRR. The AUR's rise as the fourth largest parliamentary party in Romania's December 2020 parliamentary elections was surprising, considering that the party was created in September 2019 and had performed modestly in the September 2020 local elections, when it won three of 3,176 mayors, 79 of 39,900 city councillors and no county councillors (Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă 2020). Several scholars argue that the AUR built on latent populism that continued between 2008 and 2020 (Soare and Tufiş 2018). In this view, populism was not defunct during this time but existed in the form of transitory political parties such as the PP-DD, which recycled old topics, framing them in a modern style, and were skilled at using television for communication (Soare and Tufiş 2018). Other authors highlighted the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on support for the AUR. The combination of COVID-19 restrictions, a high number of pandemic-related deaths and price increases led to a growth in popular frustration with the government, a rise in populist attitudes in Romania from May 2020 to January 2021 and an increase in support for the AUR (Doiciar and Creţan 2021; Sultănescu et al. 2021).

The AUR's ideology reflects the main attributes characteristic of the PRR: nativism, populism and authoritarianism. Like its predecessors, one of the AUR's stated goals has been to recreate the Greater Romania through unification with the Republic of Moldova, a territory lost by Romania in 1940 following its annexation by the Soviet Union (Partidul Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor 2023). The AUR has also competed, less successfully, in the neighbouring Republic of Moldova, where it did not pass the 5% electoral threshold. Unification is popular in Romania, where 74% of the population favoured unification in September 2020, but received only 30% of popular support in the Republic of Moldova (Hendrik 2020). The AUR also shows similarities with the previous PRR parties regarding their positions in respect of nationalism and Eastern Orthodox religion as a pillar of the nation. Among the AUR's major policies is the promotion of Romanian identity, associated with xenophobia and antisemitism (Gheorghiu and Praisler 2022), which was also central to the PRM. The AUR's programme avoids explicit discriminatory language against minorities. However, the AUR's leader, George Simion, is known for his exclusionary public positions against ethnic Hungarian, Muslims, migrants and refugees, leading some commentators to characterize the AUR as neo-fascist (Grapă and Mogoş 2023).

The AUR is also a populist party that appeals to the people against the corrupt elite. The party has successfully used the media, including social media, to criticize the government (Doiciar and Creţan 2021). During the 2020 electoral campaign, the AUR condemned the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 crisis, the increase in energy bills and the loss of jobs and promised reforms in major policy areas (Partidul Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor 2023). George Simion gained notoriety during the pandemic with his anti-masking campaign, an issue that divided the population, and he condemned the lockdowns and vaccination (Doiciar and Creţan 2021). Some of the AUR's positions have been ambiguous or contradictory, in line with its populist character. For instance, on economic policy, the AUR presents a mix of ideas like the PP-DD, stating support for businesses, but also redistributive policies to reduce poverty and social inequality (Partidul Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor 2023).

The AUR has developed an authoritarian ideology that includes a promotion of national sovereignty against the EU institutions and policies, support for tradition, authority and Christianity. The AUR also criticizes post-1990 democratic governments as being anti-national and envisions a new society based on hierarchical organization (Partidul Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor 2023). The AUR's authoritarian views are also evident in George Simion's outrageous attacks against public officials, some of them accompanied by verbal and physical violence, and violent public demonstrations by the AUR's supporters (Grapă and Mogoş 2023). Among the most ill-famed incidents have been an attack by Simion and his followers on the city hall in Timişoara, one of the largest cities in Romania; a verbal attack against then Prime Minister Florin Cîțu during a parliamentary session, and a physical and verbal attack against the minister of energy while the minister was delivering an address to the parliament (Grapă and Mogoş 2023).

The AUR's success has also been helped by the internal crises of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL) (Figure 1). The PSD-led coalition experienced a wave of anti-corruption protests from 2017 to 2019, paving the way for the resignation of the PSD prime minister, Viorica Dancilă, in October 2019, following a vote of no confidence in her cabinet (Vîlcu and Timu 2019). The PSD, the largest party in Romanian, also suffered because of the sentencing to prison of its leader Liviu Dragnea on charges of corruption in May 2019 (Krauthamer 2019). Corruption has been a permanent feature of the PSD and its predecessors, the Party of Social Democracy in Romania and the Democratic National Salvation Front, despite the party's efforts to modernize and break with its communist past (Armeanu 2010: 75–77). The 2015 rise to party leadership of Liviu Dragnea, a man with a criminal record, led to a systematic undermining of the rule of law to shelter its leaders from corruption charges (Chiruţă 2021). The ousting of the party from government in 2019, an unprecedented development in the PSD’s history, left behind a power vacuum (Chiruţă 2021). The dynamic of the party system is relevant beyond the Romanian context, underscoring how major changes in the party system following a political crisis may create opportunities for the rise of PRR parties.

Figure 1. Timeline of Political and COVID-19 Crises.

Figure 1 shows the timeline of political and COVID crises. The alliance led by the opposition PNL formed a minority government in November 2019. Soon thereafter, the PNL government was confronted with the COVID-19 crisis, which led to a 3.9% drop in GDP compared to 2019, and an increase from 4% to 4.9% in the unemployment rate from December 2019 to December 2020 (National Institute of Statistics 2021a, 2021b). The impact of the economic crisis was compounded by the population's frustration with the interdictions imposed by the PNL government. Moreover, the PNL leaders seemed to disregard the masking and social-distancing mandates, adding to popular resentment. The lack of information regarding the evolution of the pandemic, the short supply of tests, the insufficient number of intensive-care beds, and the ineffective handling of infected people upset the population and gave ammunition to the AUR, which was vocal about the government's incompetence (Heil et al. 2020). Trust in the government declined from 30% in November 2019 to 29% in winter 2020, and trust in the parliament declined from 31% to 26% during the same period (Eurobarometers 2019, 2021).

The AUR's voters do not present noticeably different positions from the voters of the mainstream parties on economic issues, but they are clearly distinct from the rest of the voters on the cultural dimension, according to a survey conducted at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Stoica et al. 2021). Their economic positions are contradictory like those of the AUR: for instance, they support redistributive policies, but they disagree that the government should have a large role in the economy. In contrast, on cultural issues the AUR's voters tend to have a negative view of the European Union and of ethnic minorities and oppose the language rights of ethnic Hungarians. This finding is consistent with Bustikova's (2014) argument that resentment against ethnic minorities is related to their electoral success and the increase in their rights. Additionally, the AUR's voters are less trusting of the government, are more likely to believe that the government is corrupt and opposed government-imposed restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic (Stoica et al. 2021).

Not all voters and localities experience a crisis the same way or relate similarly to political parties and their messages. To understand better the support for the AUR, this article examines the impact of economic, political and cultural factors on support for the AUR. Following economic theories of PRR voting, I expect that localities with lower levels of socioeconomic development will be less resilient to social and economic change and thus will be more severely affected by economic crises, showing higher support for the AUR. Thus, the first hypothesis is:

Hypothesis 1: Localities with low levels of socioeconomic development will be more supportive of PRR parties than localities with high levels of socioeconomic development.

According to the political perspective, I expect that political dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties will translate into increased support for the AUR. Government restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus led to a decline in voter turnout to 33.35%. This represented a decrease by 6% relative to the previous 2016 general elections and it was the lowest since 1990 (Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă 2020). I expect that low voter turnout will have a positive effect on the vote for the AUR, because the AUR was skilled at mobilizing resentful voters. Moreover, the AUR's voters were more likely to disregard COVID-19 precautions than the voters of the main parties (Stoica et al. 2021):

Hypothesis 2: Low voter turnout will favour PRR parties.

Based on cultural theories, I expect the vote for the PRR to be strong in localities with low exposure to ethnic minorities. Many studies link conservative values to attitudes against minorities and immigrants, and a heightened sense of nationalism (Hainmueller and Hopkins 2014). The expectation is that more ethnically diverse localities are more tolerant and thus less likely to support the PRR. Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority in Romania, representing about 1 million people or approximately 5% of the population (National Institute of Statistics 2023). They are also the only ethnic minority that has won parliamentary seats in elections and participated in coalition governments. The resulting broadening of ethnic Hungarian cultural rights has made them a primary target of the PRR. I expect that localities with low exposure to ethnic minorities will be more supportive of PRR parties. Cultural factors lead to the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: Localities with low ethnic diversity are more likely to support PRR parties than localities with high ethnic diversity.

Data and method

To examine the relationship between economic, political and cultural factors and support for the AUR, I used two sources of data: (1) Contextul local al votării 2020, a dataset of local indicators that includes variables measured at the locality level, such as the local human development index (LHDI), urbanization, average population age and share of the Hungarian population (Sandu 2020), and (2) election data for the 2020 parliamentary elections at the locality level (Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă 2020).

The dependent variable is votes for the AUR in the 2020 parliamentary elections for the Chamber of Deputies. The data are measured at the locality level as a percentage of the total number of valid votes. Localities are identified by the official SIRUTA code, which is the official classification of Romanian administrative territorial units such as counties, cities and villages. The socioeconomic independent variable is LHDI, which includes several dimensions – human capital, employment capital, mobility capital, working-age capital and housing capital – and ranges from zero to 100. Details on the calculation of the LHDI are provided by Dumitru Sandu (2017). The political independent variable is voter turnout at the 2020 parliamentary elections, measured by the total number of votes as a percentage of the total number of registered voters. The cultural independent variable measures the ethnic diversity of the locality as the share of the Hungarian population of the total population. It is calculated as the natural logarithm of (1 + share Hungarian population). The control variables are urban (1, yes; 0, no) and the average age of the population living in the community measured in years. Summary statistics of the variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Summary Statistics

Note: CD = Chamber of Deputies; LDHI = local human development index.

I test the hypotheses using a random intercept model (RIM) in which the locality variables are treated as fixed effects (fixed slopes) and the intercept varies based on the grouping of variables at the county level. An alternative model is discussed in the Supplementary Material, using a hierarchical linear regression (HLM) with county-fixed effects, which allows the estimation of within-county variation in the vote for the AUR that is due to differences between localities. I used cluster standard errors to account for possible confounders across counties.

Results

The results are reported in Table 3 using a random intercept model. The results of the RIM support Hypotheses 2 and 3 but do not support Hypothesis 1. Model 1 is the null multilevel model without predictors and serves as a baseline for comparison for subsequent models. It indicates that the vote for the AUR across counties is 9.204%. The within-county variance in the vote for the AUR is 18.171, and the between-county variance is 14.006. The variance partition coefficient (VPC) is 0.435, showing that 43.5% of the variance in the vote for the AUR can be attributed to differences between counties. A large likelihood ratio of 1,723 provides strong evidence of county effects on the vote for the AUR and thus supports the use of the multilevel model.

Table 3. Random Intercept Models of Vote for the AUR in 2020 Parliamentary Elections in Romania

Note: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05. LHDI = local human development index; VPC = variance partition coefficient; LR = likelihood ratio. Random intercept method used for all models. Number of observations = 3,076.

Figure 2 presents a plot of county residuals of vote for the AUR from Table 3 for Model 1. From this plot we can see that the estimated residual for the capital city, Bucharest, is located at the mean of all residuals and has a value of −1.88. Harghita county has an estimated residual of −2.18, which was ranked lowest, based on which I estimate a mean score for this county of −5.36. At the opposite end is Constanţa county, with an estimated residual of 2.18, which was ranked 42, the highest, and an estimated mean score of 7.99. The values in the plot evidence that, in the absence of any predictors, the top five-ranking counties are Constanţa, Suceava, Arad, Iaşi and Neamţ, counties located in Dobrogea, Moldova and Transylvania, while the bottom five-ranking are Harghita and Covasna (two counties with a majority Hungarian population located in Transylvania), and Argeş, Dolj and Mehedinţi, situated in Muntenia.

Figure 2. County Effects: Mean and Variance of County Residuals of Vote for the AUR from Table 3 for Model 1 (Null Multilevel Model).

Models 2–6 estimate the effects of socioeconomic, political and cultural factors treated as fixed effects. Several random slope models were tested but were not statistically significant, indicating that the slopes do not vary significantly, and a random intercept model provides the best fit. In Model 2, the coefficient for LHDI is not statistically significant, therefore Hypothesis 1 is not supported. Model 3 shows a negative significant effect for voter turnout, suggesting that a decrease by 1% in the mean voter turnout of the locality will lead to an increase of 0.155% in the vote for the AUR, and thus supports Hypothesis 2. We observe a decrease in within-county variance from 18.171 in the null multilevel model to 15.928, which is expected because voter turnout is a locality level variable. There is also a large decrease in between-county variance, from 14.006 to 10.517, which indicates that distribution of localities by voter turnout differs from county to county. Figure A1 in the appendix in the Supplementary Material displays the means of predicted county votes for the AUR by voter turnout.

Model 4 examines the impact of cultural variables using the size of the Hungarian population in the locality. The negative coefficient indicates that a decrease by one unit in the size of the Hungarian population will lead to an increase of 1.199% in the vote for the AUR at the locality level, which provides support for Hypothesis 3. There is a decrease in between-county variance from 14.006 to 12.210, showing that the distribution of localities by Hungarian population also differs from county to county. Figure A2 in the appendix presents the means of predicted county votes for the AUR by Hungarian population.

Models 5 and 6 include the socioeconomic, political and cultural variables with and without controls. The differences are relatively small between the two models, with the important difference that the LHDI is statistically significant when controls are included. Model 5 provides further support for Hypotheses 2 and 3. The negative coefficient for voter turnout indicates that a decrease by 1% in voter turnout will lead to an increase by 0.162% in the support for the AUR. Likewise, the negative coefficient for the Hungarian population indicates that a decrease by one unit in the size of the Hungarian population will lead to an increase by 1.332% in the vote for the AUR. The variance partition coefficient (VPC) for Model 5 is 0.366, which shows that 36.6% of the variance in the vote for the AUR can be attributed to differences between counties. The likelihood ratio (LR) is 1,172 for Model 5, providing overwhelming evidence that the vote for the AUR differs across counties. In Model 6 all coefficients are statistically significant, therefore Model 6 provides support for all three hypotheses. The negative coefficient for the LHDI indicates that a decrease by one unit in the LHDI will lead to an increase by 0.024% in the vote for the AUR. The effect is small, but the inverse relationship is as expected. The negative coefficient for urban localities indicates that the vote for the AUR is higher in rural localities. The negative significant effect for population age on the vote for the AUR suggests that a decrease by one year in the mean age of the locality will lead to an increase by 0.28% in the vote for the AUR.

Conclusion

Why and where did the populist radical right AUR find electoral support in the 2020 parliamentary elections? The AUR capitalized on the anxiety created by the COVID-19 crisis, the unpopularity of the pandemic restrictions and the political turmoil in the mainstream parties, the PSD and the PNL. Using a nationalist, populist and anti-government discourse, the AUR redefined the Romanian character of the nation and revived past debates about ethnic minority rights and the territories that Romania lost following World War II. The rapid rise of the AUR to 9% of the votes is relevant beyond Romanian and European politics, highlighting the ability of the PRR to exploit political or economic crises and advance a nationalist and exclusionary agenda.

The results strongly support the cultural and political explanations for voting for the PRR. Even in the context of an economic crisis, socioeconomic factors played a limited role – a finding that goes against a large body of the literature on rise of the PRR and is likely due to the mix of left and right policies presented by the AUR. The cultural factors relate to the AUR's emphasis on the Romanian and Christian traits of the nation, a rejection of multiculturalism and the unification of Romania with the Republic of Moldova. Political explanations are linked to the AUR's anti-government and anti-COVID-19 restrictions rhetoric, and the low voter turnout during the pandemic. The examination of 3,181 Romanian localities indicates that support for the AUR was stronger in localities with low ethnic diversity, low voter turnout and in rural areas. The AUR attracted the support of young voters, a finding that is consistent with previous studies (Doiciar and Creţan 2021). In contrast with the PRM, which suffered due to the decline of nostalgia for communism (Feșnic 2015), the AUR was helped by a young nationalist constituency. The regions most supportive of the AUR were Moldova and Dobrogea and, to a lesser extent, Transylvania.

Whether the AUR will consolidate itself into a lasting PRR party or will turn out to be a transitory phenomenon remains an important question. The AUR is more cohesive ideologically than the PP-DD but lacks the strong ideology of the PRM. The mainstream parties have regarded the AUR as a non-acceptable partner in the governing coalitions following the 2020 election. The AUR has received close to 15% of the votes in the 2024 European Parliament election, in second place after the PSD–PNL alliance. It also ranked second after the PSD with 18% of the votes in the 2024 parliamentary election, but was not considered for the governing coalition. The AUR takes advantage of political and cultural dissatisfaction, and is helped by a young demographic, making the PRR a phenomenon that is likely to persist in the coming years in Romania. Its fate depends on a multitude of factors, including developments in the PSD and the PNL, the AUR's ability to build a professional party organization and whether the rest of society will choose to isolate it or not.