Victor Ponta would emerge as winner of the presidential election, irrespective of who his opponent might be, were the election to be held this coming Sunday, according to the „Barometer of public opinion – The Truth about Romania“ conducted by INSCOP Research and quoted by „Adevarul“ daily newspaper, according to which Ponta would outrun all his opponents whose names have been spread through the media, including the Social Liberal Union (USL) official candidate, Liberal Crin Antonescu, with the premier getting 60 pc of the votes and the Senate speaker a mere 40 pc. Were Ponta and Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu to stand for president, the former would get 55 pc of the votes and the latter, 45 per cent.
The Premier would also come ahead of Civic Force leader Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, 59 pc to 41 pc. The same source shows Antonescu would defeat Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, a former prime minister, with a similar scoring of 59 pc to 41 pc. The PNL leader would however be defeated by Mayor Oprescu, 51 pc against 49 pc. In his turn, businessman Gigi Becali would win over Dan Diaconescu, leader of the PP-DD in the presidential race, 58 pc to 42pc. INSCOP notices that a „significant segment of the PNL electorate (46.7 pc) would vote for Victor Ponta for president of Romania, and not Crin Antonescu“. Victor Ponta would be voted by 66 pc of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) voters and 63.3 pc of those with the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), who are likely to vote for him on account of his intention to sign a cooperation protocol with the Magyar political leaders, 57.4 pc of the electoral pool of Dan Diaconescu’s left-leaning populist party, and 87.5 pc of voters of the Civic Force, an electorally insignificant party.
For his part, Antonescu would be preferred by 53 pc of the voters from his own party and over 50 pc of the electorate of the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) and Greater Romania Party (PRM). A Ponta-Antonescu final would therefore result in 58.9 pc of PDL voters going for Antonescu and 41.1 pc for Ponta, which would explain the pro-PDL-PNL statements by political officials in the Vasile Blaga-led Democrat-Liberal team. The poll was conducted February 21–28, on 1,066 representative sample subjects, with an error margin of ± 3 pc, and a confidence rate of 95 pc.
