# Unravelling a new romance: Why emigrants support radical right populists

Sergiu Gherghina, Sergiu Miscoiu

► To cite this version:

Sergiu Gherghina, Sergiu Miscoiu. Unravelling a new romance: Why emigrants support radical right populists. Ethnicities, 2025, 10.1177/14687968251393822. hal-05331793

HAL Id: hal-05331793

https://hal.science/hal-05331793v1

Submitted on 26 Oct 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

# Unravelling a new romance: Why emigrants support radical right populists

Sergiu Gherghina<fnref n="1" /> and Sergiu Miscoiu<fnref n="2" />

## Abstract

There is mixed evidence regarding the extent to which emigrants support radical right populists in their home countries, and we also know very little about why that support happens. The present article seeks to address this puzzle and aims to explain why emigrants vote for radical right populist candidates and parties. Using semi-structured interviews with Romanian emigrants after the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, it reveals that their support was driven by a protest vote against the mainstream parties that they felt had underperformed in government and failed to introduce reforms for a while, along with a quest for national identity and spirituality in uncertain times, and – to a significantly lower extent – mild sovereignist and Eurosceptic attitudes. These findings add nuance to, and complement, the burgeoning literature on non-resident citizens’ electoral preferences.

## Keywords

emigrants, radical right, populist, protest vote, spirituality, Romania

## Introduction

Some emigrants support radical right populists running in their home country's elections. Two main lines of argument seek to explain this support. On the one hand, populists in the

## Corresponding author:

Sergiu Gherghina, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow, Bute Gardens, Adam Smith Building, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK.

Email: sergiu.gherghina@glasgow.ac.uk

Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article

<footnote n="1">¹Department of Politics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Department of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai University Cluj, Cluj-Napoca, Romania</footnote>
home country have limited electoral appeal to emigrants because populist discourse tends to conflict with emigrants’ values, socio-demographic profiles, cross-border social networks, and transnational identities, and also because populists make limited voter mobilization efforts abroad (Turcu and Urbatsch, 2023). On the other hand, emigrants are targeted by homeland populists because some of them remain stakeholders in their home countries, maintain strong ties with people at home whose voting behavior they can influence, feel that they were forced to emigrate by their government’s decisions, experience long-distance nationalism and nostalgia for the country they left behind, while being out of touch with contemporary realities (Gherghina and Giugal, 2025; Jakobson et al., 2023; Umpierrez De Reguero and Jakobson, 2023). Because of this, political parties are increasingly focusing on voters abroad and developing stronger mobilization campaigns that use transnational rather than national populism, in an attempt to construct a broader concept of the “people” reaching beyond national borders (Kuyper and Moffitt, 2020).

The 2024 legislative and presidential elections in Romania showed higher shares of out-of-country than in-country votes for three radical right populist parties and their presidential candidates (Gherghina and Giugal, 2025): the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, S.O.S. Romania, and the Party of Young People (POT); for more details, see the section below on the 2024 elections and campaigning in Romania. The discourses of these political parties and candidates are nationalist, sovereignist, conservative, religiously inflected, and anti-European. Romanian migrants living elsewhere in the EU are the least likely group to support such political actors in the home country. These parties and candidates openly criticize the EU, even though it brings direct benefits to these groups of migrants, such as freedom of movement and job opportunities. Many Romanian labor migrants do not belong to the lower segments of the receiving societies, and thus rarely feel the types of grievances usually associated with support for populists. Most Romanian migrants are well integrated and report limited or no discrimination against them in their host countries (Cuadrado et al., 2018; Gherghina et al., 2020), which means that they do not usually belong to the stigmatized groups that struggle to build a positive social identity and that often support populists (Spruyt et al., 2016). Moreover, few Romanian migrants indicate a desire to return to their home country in the near future (Gherghina et al., 2020). In theory, this should make the nationalist discourse less appealing to them. Finally, in the previous national legislative (2016 and 2020) and presidential elections, Romanian migrants rarely supported radical right parties and candidates.

Given all these characteristics, this article asks: why do Romanian emigrants support radical-right populists? While several studies show that some emigrants support populists, there is limited discussion about the reasons why. Moreover, there is some research on what drives migrants to support radical right populists in the host country (Spierings and Jacobs, 2025), but we have little information on why migrants back them in the home country. This article addresses that gap in the literature and explains why Romanian migrants voted for the radical right populist parties and candidates in the two elections organized in November and December 2024. It uses data from 33 semi-structured interviews with migrants who supported one of these parties and candidates. The interviews were conducted several weeks after the elections (for details, see the research design). Our
exploratory study brings three contributions to the literature on emigrants’ support for
radical right populists. First, we underscore the relevance of long-distance nationalism and
nostalgia, rather than of transnational populism, in mobilizing migrants’ hopes for a better
future for their home country. In this sense, emigrants may find the rhetoric of radical right
populists appealing even when they do not face harsh realities in their host country.
Second, we identify the elements of populist discourse that migrant voters are drawn to.
We reinforce the general claims made about the importance of social media use in these
elections, as broadly emphasized by political pundits and the traditional media, and show
that the content of those messages effectively reached migrant voters. Third, we show that
migrants’ voting behavior combines long-lasting dissatisfaction with the establishment
with a proactive attitude of wishing to seize the opportunity to enhance national identity.
We nuance the existing approach according to which people perceive globalization and
migration as threats to national identity, and hence support radical right populists (Mudde,
2007; Rooduijn, 2015).

The next section reviews the literature exploring the reasons why emigrants support
radical right populists. The third section presents the data and methodology used in our
analysis. After that, we briefly discuss the context of the 2024 presidential and parlia-
mentary elections in Romania and the main messages conveyed in those campaigns. The
fifth section presents our research findings, identifies their key implications for the broader
field of study, and suggests directions for further research.

Emigrants and support for radical right populists

By radical right populists we refer here to political competitors that combine nativism, usually reflected in nationalism and xenophobia, authoritarianism, with an emphasis on law and order or religion, and populism (Mudde, 2007). Nativism is the belief that the interests of the “native” population take priority over those of outsiders such as immigrants, and is characterized by exclusionary or hostile attitudes toward ethnic minorities and foreigners (Betz, 2017; Gherghina et al., 2013). The authoritarian component of radical right rhetoric refers mainly to the necessity for obedience to authority, the centralization of power, and tough measures such as punitive policies or restrictions on diversity to maintain social cohesion and order (Carter, 2018). Populism frames politics as a struggle between the virtuous and unified people and a corrupt and self-serving elite. It places a strong emphasis on the supposed general will of the people, which is the source of legitimate power (Mişcoiu, 2012; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017).

The radical-right populist vote has received extensive coverage in the literature, previous explanations identifying both supply- and demand-side determinants. However, little research has explored what drives emigrants’ support for such political actors. In formulating our theoretical arguments, we draw inspiration from several strands of literature: demand-side explanations of voting preferences, populist rhetoric, and emigrants’ transnationalism.

People’s grievances stemming from levels of unemployment, economic insecurities,
and the threat of globalization can predict electoral support for radical right populists (Rico
and Anduiza, 2019; Swank and Betz, 2003). People may leave their home country to find
solutions to economic grievances (including better job opportunities) or health issues,
identify better education opportunities, or to achieve higher standards of living (O'Reilly and Benson, 2009). Dissatisfaction in these spheres of life forces some to emigrate in the hope – or sometimes persuaded by the experiences of their co-nationals abroad – that their situation can be improved elsewhere. In other cases, structural problems impel people to emigrate: high levels of corruption, financial crises, or the inability of the home country's economy to create jobs for the existing labor force (Horváth and Anghel, 2009). The income earned in host countries can resolve some of the emigrants' social-economic problems, and they can support their families back home through remittances. Some emigrants use their earnings from abroad to buy properties, improve housing conditions, or to start a business in their home countries (Sandu et al., 2018).

While migration can alleviate some of the initial dissatisfaction, it can also foster resentment towards the home country's political establishment. Emigrants might hold the political elites back at home responsible for the conditions that forced them to emigrate (Jakobson et al., 2020; López-Sala, 2019). Many problems pushing migrants to leave their own country may be the result of faulty policy making or lack of reform. Specifically, previous studies indicate that the main reasons behind Romanians' decisions to emigrate relate to issues like corruption, employment, and welfare (Gherghina et al., 2020; Sandu et al., 2018), which reflect long-term policy failures. Such anti-establishment attitudes can evolve into protest voting. This is a rational voting behavior that can take two forms. The first of these is a temporary behavior: voters may support extremism to frighten and shock mainstream political parties and elites (Van der Eijk et al., 1996). Mainstream parties often isolate, stigmatize and deny the legitimacy of populist radical right parties (Akkerman and Rooduijn, 2015), which is why voting for the latter may be considered an appropriate means to shake up the system. The second type of behavior can last longer because it is a reaction to long-term problems: voters' discontent with the political system or the elites leads to the erosion of political trust, critiques of democracy, and dissatisfaction with the functioning of institutions (Bélanger and Aarts, 2006; Pop-Eleches, 2010).

Radical right populists build their electoral appeal on nostalgia for the heartland, which is a utopian construction of the past, a “romanticized conception of life as it has been lived” (Taggart, 2004: 278). This view of the lost homeland may be embraced as an antidote to the perceived loss of identity (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008). Radical right populists seek political legitimacy for the present through “a backward-looking reactionary ideology, reflecting a deep sense of nostalgia for the good old days” (Betz and Johnson, 2004: 324). Populist actors’ references to the country’s glorious past are designed to persuade voters that “the elites hijacked the people’s will long ago, and they promise to return power to the people. According to this logic, back in the good old days corrupt elites were not powerful enough to abuse the authentic people” (Elçi, 2021: 698). These aspects of nostalgia might appeal to emigrants who maintain close ties to their home country. They give rise to a form of long-distance nationalism, which revolves around the nation as a form of collective identity and popular sovereignty. The latter is “aimed against the domination of society by extra- or supra-societal political forces deemed to be illegitimate because they are not rooted in the people” (Blokker, 2005: 376). In Eastern Europe, the rhetoric of radical right populists includes clericalism, with a strong emphasis on Christian values and traditions that not only signal a break with the communist past
(Pirro, 2015), but also reinforce a rejection of progressive liberal values, such as equality and inclusiveness for different minorities (ethnic, sexual).

One main challenge for radical right populists is how they can persuade voters that they offer a valid alternative to the establishment. To do so, they tend to mobilize and channel people's preferences through vivid election campaigns and charismatic leadership. Election campaigns allow parties and candidates to distinguish themselves from competitors (including by highlighting their weaknesses), increase their visibility, capture the media's attention, trail their own policies, and frame political discussions (Branham and Wlezien, 2020; Gardner, 2009). Intensive election campaigns are often associated with higher vote shares (Fieldhouse and Cutts, 2009).

Radical right populists often use social media in their campaigns because the traditional media tend to ignore or misrepresent their views, and openly attack their stances and actions (Ellinas, 2018). The online presence and communication of radical right movements has generally intensified in the past decades (Scrivens et al., 2020). All this is complemented by charismatic leadership, which is crucial for radical right populists because it strengthens their bond with their followers and boosts their electoral appeal (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008). High levels of personalization render the leaders and their parties inseparable in the eyes of the electorate. These leaders claim to be the genuine representatives of the people, to voice the will of the public, and to speak out for the masses, while also conveying the general idea that they are no different from the average citizen (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008).

Overall, these strands of literature indicate that several factors could explain support for right-wing populists: critique of and dissatisfaction toward democracy, economic and social grievances, anti-establishment attitudes, nationalist attitudes, and conservative values. We examine these empirically in the Romanian case to establish whether they (or other) factors make a difference.

## Research design

To understand why Romanian emigrants support radical right populists, we conducted 33 semi-structured interviews with Romanians who had been living abroad for at least 3 years. We focused on migrants to EU member states hosting high numbers of officially registered Romanians, where the total share of votes for the two candidates in the 2024 elections was higher than the average for the overall diaspora constituency: Germany 71%, France 57%, Italy 64% and Spain 62%. We selected a sample of participants to maximize variations in gender, age, length of stay in host country, and host country. With a couple of exceptions, the participants indicated that they would not return to live in Romania in the following 2 years. Table 1 includes the interview participants: the letter indicates the host country (e.g., G for Germany) followed by the participant code in that country. The interviews were conducted face-to-face (15) and online (18) in December 2024 and January 2025. The participants were recruited through snowballing. To reduce the risk of homogeneity and network bias, we used multiple seeds (i.e., we started with diverse initial participants) and we used a degree-based participant recruitment which we adjusted for the overrepresentation of connected individuals by recruiting the participants inversely to their network degree.
<table><caption>**Table 1.** Overview of the participants' profiles.</caption><thead><tr><th>Participant</th><th>Gender</th><th>Age</th><th>Profession</th><th>Host country</th><th>Length of stay (years)</th><th>Vote in the presidential elections</th><th>Vote in the parliamentary elections</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>G1</td><td>M</td><td>23</td><td>Driver</td><td>Germany</td><td>3</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>POT</td></tr><tr><td>G2</td><td>F</td><td>34</td><td>Cleaner</td><td>Germany</td><td>5</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>G3</td><td>M</td><td>40</td><td>Salesman</td><td>Germany</td><td>7</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>G4</td><td>M</td><td>45</td><td>Worker</td><td>Germany</td><td>10</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F1</td><td>F</td><td>31</td><td>Waitress</td><td>France</td><td>3</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F2</td><td>M</td><td>21</td><td>Truck driver</td><td>France</td><td>Born abroad</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F3</td><td>M</td><td>38</td><td>IT expert</td><td>France</td><td>14</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>F4</td><td>F</td><td>60</td><td>Retired</td><td>France</td><td>21</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F5</td><td>F</td><td>30</td><td>Secretary</td><td>France</td><td>8</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>POT</td></tr><tr><td>F6</td><td>M</td><td>19</td><td>Student</td><td>France</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F7</td><td>F</td><td>51</td><td>Cleaner</td><td>France</td><td>6</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F8</td><td>M</td><td>29'</td><td>Bodyguard</td><td>France</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>F9</td><td>M</td><td>36</td><td>Priest</td><td>France</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F10</td><td>F</td><td>24</td><td>Office work</td><td>France</td><td>Born abroad</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>F11</td><td>M</td><td>34</td><td>Worker</td><td>France</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>F12</td><td>M</td><td>51</td><td>Engineer</td><td>France</td><td>17</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>POT</td></tr><tr><td>F13</td><td>F</td><td>47</td><td>Au pair</td><td>France</td><td>11</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>I1</td><td>M</td><td>32</td><td>Worker</td><td>Italy</td><td>5</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>I2</td><td>F</td><td>46</td><td>Assistant</td><td>Italy</td><td>11</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>I3</td><td>F</td><td>28</td><td>Travel agent</td><td>Italy</td><td>3</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>I4</td><td>F</td><td>25</td><td>Bartender</td><td>Italy</td><td>5</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>POT</td></tr><tr><td>I5</td><td>M</td><td>51</td><td>Salesman</td><td>Italy</td><td>19</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>I6</td><td>M</td><td>26</td><td>Truck driver</td><td>Italy</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>I7</td><td>F</td><td>49</td><td>Cleaner</td><td>Italy</td><td>7</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>I8</td><td>M</td><td>33</td><td>Student</td><td>Italy</td><td>9</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>I9</td><td>F</td><td>25</td><td>Sales assistant</td><td>Italy</td><td>Born abroad</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>POT</td></tr><tr><td>I10</td><td>M</td><td>40</td><td>Worker</td><td>Italy</td><td>10</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>S1</td><td>M</td><td>26</td><td>Worker</td><td>Spain</td><td>Born abroad</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>S2</td><td>M</td><td>27</td><td>Driver</td><td>Spain</td><td>3</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>S3</td><td>F</td><td>23</td><td>Waitress</td><td>Spain</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>S4</td><td>M</td><td>33</td><td>Fireman</td><td>Spain</td><td>11</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>S.O.S. Romania</td></tr><tr><td>S5</td><td>F</td><td>40</td><td>Nurse</td><td>Spain</td><td>7</td><td>Simion</td><td>AUR</td></tr><tr><td>S6</td><td>M</td><td>30</td><td>Electrician</td><td>Spain</td><td>4</td><td>Georgescu</td><td>AUR</td></tr></tbody></table>
The main selection criterion for the participants was their self-reported vote for one of the two nationalist candidates in the first round of the 2024 presidential elections and for one of the three nationalist parties in the 2024 national legislative election. Self-reported voting behavior in the aftermath of elections can be affected by social desirability bias, which is often reflected in overreporting support for popular candidates because that is viewed favorably. In other words, people sometimes try to hide their true preferences due to a fear of being stigmatized. It is, however, unlikely that this bias will occur when voters support unpopular or controversial candidates and parties. In Romania, the vote for the radical right populists was unpopular and criticized both in the traditional media and on social media. Nevertheless, when recruiting the participants for interviews, we used several strategies to mitigate a potential social desirability bias such as clearly communicating that the answers would be anonymous and confidential, framing some questions indirectly, and the use of scenarios to distance the interview participant from issues that could be perceived as sensitive. The average length of interviews was 50 min. We reached saturation point (Hennink et al., 2020) at 30 interviews, but we conducted three more to ensure that this was indeed the case. Our initial list of participants included approximately 60 people: 15 emigrants per surveyed country. In the end, the participants were unequally distributed across the selected host countries because we conducted the interviews sequentially, according to their availability. Since we did not notice any differences in the answers across countries, we did not aim for equal distribution.

The interview guide (included as Appendix 1) was developed around the main topics identified in the theoretical review as driving the vote for radical right populists: general dissatisfaction towards democracy and democratic institutions, grievances, anti-establishment attitudes, nationalist attitudes, and conservative values. We asked general questions about the reasons why these emigrants had voted for the radical right populist candidates and parties. We also prepared follow-up questions reflecting the above themes to elicit further details in case the answers to the main questions were short and uninformative. In addition to these four themes that helped in structuring the answers, we used inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2021) to identify further reasons why the interview participants had supported nationalist candidates and parties. This method allowed for a flexible clustering of similar points into common themes that were not extracted from the literature. In doing so, we read all the answers and sought to assign sentences to sub-themes and then to larger themes.

The process of collecting, grouping, and analyzing the data was divided into three phases after transcribing the interviews: independent reading (by the authors) of the interviews and outlining the initial themes, comparison of the themes, and reaching decisions about the final themes and their interpretation. When comparing the themes and the answers assigned to each, the degree of similarity between the coding was higher than 95%. Based on this combination of deductive and inductive thematic analysis, we identified three main themes in our participants’ answers: protest/anti-system vote, a quest for identity and spirituality in times of crisis, and mild sovereignist and Eurosceptic attitudes. A specific sub-theme revealed by the follow-up questions was leaders’ charisma, which is included in the discussion about identity and spirituality since the participants referred to these together. The coding scheme and process through which we derived the sub-themes and the main themes is outlined in Table 2.
<table><caption>**Table 2.** Coding scheme and emerging main themes.</caption><thead><tr><td>Sentence</td><td>Sub-theme</td><td>Theme</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>"The politicians are thieves, the worst kind of thieves, because a minister can steal in 1 day by signing a fake contract a thousand times more than what a poor ordinary salesman can steal in his entire life!" (F13)</td><td>Corruption within the establishment</td><td>Protest vote</td></tr><tr><td>"The state has gone into total collapse under this government, the hospitals are in ruins, many schools still do not have toilets and water. In a nutshell, they have achieved nothing" (I5)</td><td>Poor government performance</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"What happened with what we decided during the last three or four referendums? Nothing!" (S5)</td><td>People kept away from the decision-making process</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"Everything is decided among the parties, they cut the slices as they wish. There is no room for us, the 'social chaff', as they call us!" (F2)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"We have been divided but now we are reborn, as the nation we deserve to be!" (F9)</td><td>Unity and national identity</td><td>National identity and spirituality</td></tr><tr><td>"I never felt as Romanian as I feel when I listen to the call for the awakening in conscience of Mr Georgescu" (G4)</td><td>Religious prevalence</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Romanians are a Christian people who should abide by their inherited traditions" (S5)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"The difference between Romanians and other nations is that we remain faithful to our religion wherever we live, at home or abroad" (F4)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"You cannot possibly understand how it feels to repeat the same operations every day, hour and minute, 8 hours per day! I feel I need... a light, a blessed caress, an answer because this cannot be all. It simply cannot be!" (S1)</td><td>Spiritual crisis</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"One who had the courage to take the bull by the horns" (I1)</td><td>Leadership charisma</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"Perhaps one of God's prophets, speaking in his name" (S3)</td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table 2. (continued)**</caption><thead><tr><td>Sentence</td><td>Sub-theme</td><td>Theme</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>"How many times I queued to be checked at the border while the poles and the Slovaks were giving me the finger? Was that fair?" (F8)</td><td>Romania(ns) being discriminated against</td><td>Mild sovereignist and Eurosceptic attitudes</td></tr><tr><td>"When they ask me where I am from, the employers almost always make a disgusted face, like I was born in the last hole of the Earth!" (I3)</td><td>War neutrality</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"Is it wise to arouse the Russians? To cut our ties with China? To provide weapons and money to the Ukrainians who will end by losing this war anyway? I don't think so" (F3)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"There have been many wars in the world, close to us or far away, and Romania should never get involved in any of them. In this way, we will not have enemies, but we will have only friends" (G2)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"It is one thing to profit from European integration. It is another thing to do whatever we are told by Ursula and her gang" (S2)</td><td>International organizations' membership</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"The wisest strategy would be to remain under NATO's protection, but to do only the minimum and keep a low profile!" (F12)</td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

## The 2024 elections and campaigning in Romania

Romania organized four elections in 2024, grouped as follows: local and European elections in June, and parliamentary and presidential elections in November. In the European elections, the parties in the coalition government – social democrats (PSD) and liberals (PNL) – presented a common list of candidates and won with almost 50% of the votes. The radical right populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) came second with 15%, while S.O.S. Romania gained around 5% of the votes. The two government parties ran separately in the presidential and parliamentary elections and scheduled the parliamentary elections for 1 December, in between the two rounds of the presidential elections (24 November and 8 December).

The PSD candidate for country president was top of the voting intentions in the polls for roughly 3 months with 24%–27%, while the PNL leader was consistently placed low in the polls with 12%–14%. AUR supported the candidacy of its leader, George Simion. Calin Georgescu ran as an independent and was considered an outsider, regularly registering less than 1% of voter intention in the polls. He is a former AUR member, with a radical nationalist, extremist religious, anti-system, anti-EU and anti-NATO discourse, but
with almost no presence in the mainstream media. He won the first round of the presidential elections with 23%, and neither the PSD nor the PNL leader made it into the second round. The first round of the 2024 presidential elections was annulled in early December on the grounds of electoral violations; for details of the reasons behind this annulment and the reactions it triggered, see Gherghina (2025). One week later, in the parliamentary elections, the government parties PSD and PNL scraped a weak parliamentary majority with the support of the Hungarian ethnic party. AUR became the country's second largest party, while S.O.S Romania and POT gained parliamentary representation. The latter (POT) openly associated itself with Georgescu. S.O.S. Romania was formed at the end of 2021 as an organizational splinter from AUR, and POT was formed in July 2023 as another organizational splinter from AUR. Although both were formed by individuals formerly active in AUR, the two splinters sought to develop their own political identities that could distinguish them from the original party and make them appealing to voters.

These parties won approximately 26%, 16% and 13.5%, adding up to majority of the votes. There was very high correlation at the country of residence level between the votes for radical right populists in the legislative and presidential elections (Gherghina and Giugal, 2025). Together, the two radical right presidential election contenders supported by these parties polled percentages similar to the combined support for the three radical right parties in the diaspora: Georgescu gained approximately 43% and Simion 12%. More than 770,000 Romanians abroad voted in the 2024 parliamentary elections, three times more than in 2020.

## Campaign messages

Georgescu played the role of a hero seeking to awaken the dormant nation. He adopted an extremist stance from the outset, comparable to the S.O.S. Romania's party leader Diana Șoșoacă who was banned from the presidential race by the Constitutional Court for making anti-constitutional statements. Georgescu took a deeply anti-systemic position, criticizing all Romania's institutions and main political actors, especially the mainstream political parties, accusing them of treason against national interests (Spotmedia, 2024). In his social media posts, he portrayed himself as the candidate of the people, feared by the entire system. He promoted an essentialist view of Romanian identity, collating various cultural, identity-based and religious elements: Orthodox phyletism (a heresy based on the primacy of national identity over the wider Orthodox religious community), fascism (inspired by the inter-war far-right Iron Guard and by the Antonescu regime), DACianism (the cult of the Romanians' DACian ancestors), and a blend of New-Age spirituality, esoterism and mysticism (Marincea, 2025). The common denominator in this ideological melting-pot was the promise that the Romanians would be collectively redeemed once the fusion between the providential man and the people was achieved.

Georgescu repeatedly used radical sovereignist and Eurosceptic messages invoking the “positive legacy” of Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime, thus cultivating a form of nostalgia for national communism (Dobre, 2024). He promoted an autarchic view of Romania, criticizing its successive post-1989 governments for having led the country into debt, and promised he would nationalize Romanian companies owned by international
corporations. He pledged referendums on Romania's NATO and EU membership, described NATO as an organization focused on offense rather than defense, and demanded the dismantlement of NATO bases in Romania. All these messages were promoted through social media channels, mainly TikTok.

In the 2024 campaign for presidential elections, Simion's strategy was to present himself as the genuine representative of the people and as a pillar of stability and resilience. While maintaining his nation-centric discourse and his essentialist stances on the Romanian people's innate Orthodoxy, he now promoted utopian and populist social-economic policies (Euronews, 2024) and took an ambiguous position on the EU and NATO. He expressed some criticisms of the societal and cultural values of the EU (soft Euroscepticism) and mentioned the risks of being dragged into conflicts under the NATO umbrella (classical pacifism and sovereignist discourse), but confirmed his support for the country's continued EU membership and cited the benefits arising from NATO's security defense, while also insisting on the need to recover some national defense attributes. Although Simion had largely denounced the traditional media since 2020, in the 2024 campaign for presidential elections he – and Georgescu – primarily appeared on one TV station that ensured them favorable coverage (Realitatea TV).

All these messages were replicated by the political parties supporting the candidates. AUR combined its traditional nationalist-populist stances with some more mainstream messages to increase its coalition potential, while remaining ambiguous on the same issues as Simion. S.O.S. Romania and POT had very similar messages to those used by Georgescu: heavily nationalist, anti-system, strongly religious, anti-European, and ultra-reactionary. For instance, the POT party leader actively campaigned against Romania's support for Ukraine, against abortion, for the extension of religious education, and for a referendum on EU membership.

## Protest voting and nostalgia-driven discourse

Our thematic analysis indicates that the emigrants' voting behavior was triggered by three key factors, which are valid across the board as illustrated by the quotes below from emigrants with different countries of residence. First, it was a protest vote against the mainstream parties and their candidates that had underperformed in government and failed to introduce reforms. The interviewees expressed strong anti-establishment critiques, which are convergent with, but not limited to, the radical right populist discourse in the country. The general idea arising from the interviews was that the emigrants saw these radical right populist actors as credible alternatives to the establishment. Second, the vote was driven by a quest for national identity and spirituality in uncertain times as promoted in the rhetoric of the radical right populists and associated with some of the candidates' charisma. Third, but to a significantly lower extent, the electoral support was driven by the mild sovereignist attitudes in the campaign discourse and some personal criticisms of the EU. The latter were not aimed against the European project, policies or institutions – as found in the radical right populist discourse in Romania – but were an expression of the perception that Romania was sometimes treated with condescension and seldomly acknowledged as an equal EU member. These reasons are summarized in Figure 1, showing the frequency with which these reasons were mentioned in descending order. The quotes
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** The reasons emigrants support radical-right populists in Romania.</figcaption></figure>

cited in the following lines are illustrative of common beliefs rather than reflecting isolated statements.

The overwhelming majority of our participants underlined the fact that they had cast a protest vote against the PSD-PNL government coalition, i.e., “the rotten parties” (F6), and the country’s incumbent president, i.e., the “ghost of Cotroceni” (G2). There were two main reasons for this broad opposition. On the one hand, many interviewees invoked the high levels of corruption within the political establishment, for example: “gangrened by the villainous thieves who have been leading the country for 30 years” (F8). The two parties in government prior to the 2024 elections, each of which were “willing and able to steal from the people” (F7), had become “even more dangerous when they joined forces to complete their dirty work together” (S5). At the top of this system, President Iohannis, “the most hypocritical leader we’ve ever had” (I2), had orchestrated the formation of the PSD-PNL coalition to “secure his corruption rents” (I4) and “continue to do nothing but get richer and richer” (S1). On the other hand, the government’s activity was heavily criticized by almost all participants. Insisting on the fact that they had “left Romania because they’d had enough of the state’s ineptitude” (F4), many participants in our research slammed the “outrageous incompetence of those who govern” (S5) while being preoccupied solely with “increasing their fortunes, even if this means hiring their lousy relatives in the administration” (F3). One interviewee used apocalyptic terms: “The state has gone into total collapse under this government, the hospitals are in ruins, many schools still do not have toilets and water. In a nutshell, they have achieved nothing” (I5).

All the interviewees regarded their votes for Georgescu and Simion in the presidential elections, and those for AUR, S.O.S. Romania, and POT in the parliamentary elections as a solution to the problems caused by the mainstream parties. In their words, the votes were
“a much-needed remedy against this system” (G3) through which voters can “kick out the politicians who have relentlessly harmed our country” (S6). Some were even more radical, saying that through their vote they wanted to ensure that “the liberal and social-democratic parties will never return to power” (F11) or “put these former ministers, MPs and other officials on public trial for what they did, after they are kicked out” (S10).

As part of their anti-system sentiment, most participants referred to restoring the role of the people in the decision-making process. One problem that roughly half of the interviewees signaled was that Romanians had “almost no say, because all the decisions are confiscated by the main parties and their leaders” (F4; F5; G3). The other half spoke about how their vote was intended to restore “democracy, which means the rule of the majority, the rule of the people” (I8) and how these parties would “represent much better what the people want” (S2). Their reasoning was driven by a hope for dramatic structural reforms and for the introduction of “public consultations and referendums” (F11), to limit the “government’s prerogative to impose new taxes” (G3), and to guarantee “that Romanians would have ownership of their own resources” (S4). These demands coincided with “the promises of those for whom the real people voted for” (I6). The expectation that power should be given back to the people had been constantly voiced over the past decades but had “unfortunately been ignored by those in government” (F9), and this vote could be seen as the “people’s revolution at the polling stations” (F5).

## National identity and spirituality

Unlike transnational populism, which aims to unite people from different countries against a common opponent, long-distance nationalism and ethno-religious populism cultivate a singular national identity. The latter, including religious values, were important motivations in our participants’ electoral choices. National and religious identity has been a recurrent topic in the radical right’s rhetoric, enabling AUR to enter Parliament in 2020 (Gherghina and Mișcoiu, 2022). Both topics were present in the two nationalist candidates’ discourses. The attention paid to these topics in the candidates’ campaigns and the degree of radicalism with which they were approached persuaded our interviewees to vote for one or other of the two.

Simion’s voters were attracted to a traditional perception of national and religious identity, which matched the candidate’s efforts to present himself as a unifier of the nation. His voters were “convinced that our nation can prevail if we stay together” (I10) and “live in harmony with the other Europeans” (S3). As one interviewee explained, “the new President should unite the Romanians, who have been separated by the ups and downs of history” (F4). Simion was described by another interviewee as the “messenger of enlightened nationalism” (I5), while others referred to the broader picture, explaining the importance of embracing the national identity; for example: “everybody has their place in our country, provided they respect our traditions and identity” (I5).

Interviewees who supported Simion generally took a traditional view of religion, close to that projected by the Romanian Orthodox Church. According to some of them, “respect for the Church is a sacred value” (F7), and “Romanians are a Christian people who should abide by their inherited traditions” (S5). Another explained that: “the difference between Romanians and other nations is that we remain faithful to our religion wherever we live, at
home or abroad” (F4). Simion was the preferred candidate because he was a “true Christian-Orthodox Romanian, who gained the respect of the heads of the Church” (G2). These participants appreciated his “discreet religious conduct” (S2), observing that he “attends holy service like any other Romanian” (I10) without “showing off his faith” (F10), making him an “example for the other politicians, who either wrap themselves in icons or turn into atheists who spit on the holy cross” (F7).

The interviewees who supported Georgescu shared an essentialist view of Romanian identity and believed that the “crisis we are facing nowadays is deep and may result in our downfall” (F3). Many considered Romanians as “the chosen nation” (G4, F11, I6, I9, S4), which is nonetheless “condemned to simply watch the spoliation of its huge resources by foreigners” (F12). Most Georgescu voters associated him with national identity. Several quotes illustrate the broad range of qualities attributed to him: “Man, with a capital M, born of the people to raise the consciousness of his people” (S6), “a pure Romanian” (I2), “independent, with no strings attached to any party, as the nation is his only party” (S1), “the son of two genuine peasants, from our heartland” (F6). Consequently, it is unsurprising that one interviewee concluded that: “Voting for him was the most natural gesture I have ever made in my life” (S4).

Regarding the religious dimension, Georgescu's voters were less inclined to accept the institutional conformism promoted by the Orthodox Church in particular. Insisting that the Romanians were “the only nation that was born Christian” (I9), they displayed a more radical religiosity, coming quite close in many respects to Neo-Protestantism, Pentecostalism, or Jehovism. Two interviewees complained about the world's decay and underlined the risk that the Romanians could follow the sinful paths of Western nations (G4, F9). A few others believed that “the kingdom of the Christ will come to the Carpathians first” (S3) and that the Romanians “need to prepare for it by living according to the Bible and to their ancestors' customs” (F13). However, roughly half of Georgescu-supporting participants expressed openness towards various forms of syncretism. For instance, almost a dozen interviewees mentioned that they consulted their horoscope daily “to see if God has aligned the planets appropriately” (F7), and many more stressed the need to fight evil forces both literally and figuratively; by undergoing “strong spiritual purification” (F8), “concentrating our positive energies against Satan, who comes among us more often nowadays” (I2), “reconnecting with our ancestors, the Dacians and their beliefs as our only salvation” (F8), or via the quest for “a Truth that exceeds by far the limits of our understanding” (I1).

Given this spiritual crisis and frequent ethno-religious messages, many participants hinted at elements of charismatic leadership as reasons for supporting radical right populists, especially Georgescu. For example, F4 explained that Georgescu had the “vision of a great leader, who puts the interests of the Romanians first, without any exaggeration or extremism”. A few other participants saw Georgescu surrounded by the mystical aura of a “much expected Savior” (F8), “perhaps one of God’s prophets, speaking in His name” (S3). As one explained, “while other politicians mock these things, Mr Călin has told me I am not wrong to think that there is more to this world than the mess we are in today” (F13). Georgescu had “light and hope” (I9), “giving us the courage to believe that peace is possible for our people” (G3). He had managed to “get through to every Romanian who felt abandoned and disappointed” (F6), and who were “searching for honest
answers in these dark times” (I9). References to Simion’s charisma were isolated; one participant called him the only “one who had the courage to take the bull by the horns” (I1).

## Mild sovereignist and Eurosceptic attitudes

Romania’s membership of the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was opposed only by a few participants who preferred “total independence, self-determination and real freedom” (F12). EU critiques were mainly limited to discontent about the “uneven treatment” which Romania had received from Brussels and the large EU states (I1, F6). Some were frustrated by the EU’s perceived lack of concern for a “balanced development in Europe” (I8), considering that the gap between Romania and the other Eastern states or the West had “remained very wide” (F4). Romania’s significantly delayed admission to the Schengen Area was seen by many as an “everyday humiliation” (F13, I9, S5), and as proof that Romanians were regarded as “secondhand citizens in Europe” (G3; F12). These participants stated that the radical right political actors were the only ones to have highlighted these issues during the campaign, and they could address them because the mainstream parties did not perform well on that topic when given the opportunity. A few other participants linked the EU to traditional values and complained that the EU forces Romania to accept gay marriage (F8; F11; G1). Despite these critiques, the vast majority of interviewees saw Romania’s place as in the EU and explicitly argued in favor of membership. This observation is consistent with survey data showing that on average between 2020 and 2024, eight out of 10 Romanians support EU membership (Szicherle, 2024).

Turning to NATO, and to the issue of security more generally, a widespread belief emerged that Romania needed “to cool down” (F1) and “put a stop to instigations to war against Russia” (S4). While a couple of participants acknowledged NATO’s role in providing military protection to Romania, most confessed their “deep concern about the prospect of being dragged into war to protect Ukraine” (I9, F3). According to them, Romania had better adopt a position of “smart neutrality, which will keep us safe” (I4) and, most importantly, “will no longer provoke Russia” (S1). However, as one migrant explained, “the blind servants of the West in PSD, PNL, and USR would never accept steering our foreign policy towards sovereignty” (F9). Unlike the incumbents, the radical right populists played the neutrality-sovereignty card and struck a chord with our interviewees. The sovereignists were considered “brave enough to address this difficult situation” (S5), to “prevent a catastrophe” (I7), and to enhance “Romania’s capacity to negotiate not just with the East, but also with the West” (F2).

Nevertheless, the security issue differentiated the more radical supporters of Călin Georgescu, S.O.S. Romania, and POT from the less extremist voters for George Simion, and partially of AUR. A dozen interviewees spontaneously mentioned that Georgescu was the “only one who told the truth” (e.g., I2, I6, F5, F12, S6, G3) about what “would happen if NATO went to war with Russia: we would all be mobilized and sent to die for Ukraine” (F11, G1). They openly indicated that their votes were motivated by this acute fear and by the certainty that their candidate would “prevent this aberration, once elected” (F9). Several participants said that Georgescu’s project to “freeze the NATO bases in Romania”
(I8) was the “right thing to do, as the Russians will have no more reason to attack Romania” (F8).

In contrast, most Simion voters displayed a more prudent attitude. One summed up this view: “We need to preserve our autonomy, but also to continue being part of NATO, it’s much safer like this” (F10). To them, Simion’s stance on security was the “rational one, balancing the East against the West” (I3). They opposed Romania’s withdrawal from NATO and believed that the “Russians are more dangerous than the Westerners, as history has proved” (F4). However, they thought it was necessary to “refuse blindly obeying the orders of the Americans in charge of NATO” (F10) and believed that Simion “illustrates this middle way very well” (G2). Finally on national security, if the cleavage between Georgescu’s and Simion’s voters was clear, that between the voters of S.O.S. Romania and POT, and those of AUR was somewhat blurrier. A handful of Georgescu’s voters admitted they had voted for AUR in the parliamentary elections because they believed AUR could win, while in their view S.O.S. Romania and POT risked not passing the electoral threshold.

## Other reasons to vote radical-right populists

In addition to these three major reasons for supporting radical-right populists, several interviewees occasionally outlined other potential drivers. One was the candidates’ perceived competence. Georgescu was praised by the participants for his impressive degrees and international experience (F3), ability to express ideas clearly like no-one else does (I4), and intellectual qualities which allow him to “see beyond the horizon” (I2). Simion was praised for his leadership skills (F7) and unmatched foreign language ability (S2).

Another reason was consistency and continuity in voting behavior. Several older voters underlined that they had always voted for nationalist candidate and parties; indeed, one explicitly stated that “Since 2000, I have been voting for Vadim Tudor and the Greater Romania Party until AUR appeared in 2020. Now I voted Georgescu and AUR, the best solution for Romania. It makes sense, I am consistent, am I not?” (G4). Other respondents said they were persuaded by politicians who rallied around some of these candidates. For example, one followed the guidance of an “MP who is local personality in the city I was born and who is now in AUR. He told us to vote with Mr Simion, which I naturally did” (I7).

Some voters argued that the candidates’ physical appearance led them to choose them. One argued that it was time to turn the page from “fat and lazy politicians” (S2) and to renew Romania. A Georgescu voters explained that “until now, we had only ugly politicians, maybe except for Petre Roman in 1990. But now, look at Mr Georgescu, he is handsome, in perfect shape, a pleasure to watch him talking and moving. Would I dare to say he is not loveable?” (F13). Simion’s supporters spoke about his “strength and energy” (F7) but also his “youth, vigor and natural beauty” (S5).
Discussion and conclusions

This article has aimed to explain why emigrants support radical right populists in their home country's elections. The findings, drawn from the semi-structured interviews conducted with 33 Romanians living in four Western European countries who voted for such political actors in the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, reveal a complex picture. Our starting point was the paradox that Romanians living abroad who benefit from EU freedoms, including a workplace, support actors with anti-European messages in their country of origin. We did not find Euroscepticism to be among the drivers of support. On the contrary, many participants expressed awareness that an EU exit for Romania would mean losing their current opportunities. A few interviewees made some mild criticisms of the EU, mainly regarding things not happening faster and better for Romanians in the EU rather than along the lines promoted by the radical right populists. Those participants were mainly concerned that Romanians were relegated to second-class status in the EU. Much of their frustration was fueled by Romania's postponed accession to the Schengen Area, which was completely granted to Romania only in January 2025.

Instead, the emigrants' vote for radical right populists in the 2024 elections in Romania was a combination of protest voting, rooted in long-term frustration with the failures of the establishment, and a romanticized-nostalgic view of the nation, intensified by long-distance nationalism. The protest vote was targeted against the mainstream parties that they perceived had underperformed in government and failed to change the conditions that drove the voters in question to emigrate. The parties in government at the time of the 2024 elections had been part of almost all the Romanian governments of the past two decades, when most of these migrants had left the country. As such, it was fairly straightforward for the emigrants to associate them with poor policies, major problems in society, and corrupt behavior. Moreover, the interviews revealed anti-establishment feelings oriented against the country's president, who was close to PNL. His most recent term in office was characterized by incomplete reforms, his post-presidency pursuit of personal advancement (e.g., the NATO Secretary General position), failing to address domestic political problems, and wasting public money for his own comfort.

The other major driver of electoral support for radical right populists was the quest for national identity and spirituality, which was prominent in the radical right populist discourse for the 2024 elections. In contrast to previous conclusions that people perceive globalization and migration as threats to their national identity (Mudde, 2007; Rooduijn, 2015), Romanian emigrants have a proactive approach to national identity, seeking to boost it through their electoral choices for candidates and parties which emphasize cultural and religious values. The messages to which the emigrants referred appealed to a sense of nostalgia for a lost and romanticized past, presented in the broader framework of long-distance nationalism. Many reported feelings of missing out on Romania's greatness and the limited possibilities to live in the glorious way of the past because they were forced by “incompetent and corrupt” elites to leave the country. They share a romanticized view that the homeland could have progressed were it not for the elites of the mainstream parties. The long-distance nationalism cultivated by the radical right populism addressed that longing. Our findings complement previous research findings according to which transnational populism seeks to overcome nationalism by constructing a broader, cross-
border concept of the “people” (Kuyper and Moffitt, 2020). Romanian emigrants to various countries tend to adhere to a form of nationalism grounded in a traditional identity and strong religious values.

All these observations make an important contribution to knowledge of the importance of social media in the support for Romanian radical-right populists in the 2024 presidential election. Much discussion among commentators, journalists, and the broader public revolved around the heightened online campaign and how TikTok was being manipulated to benefit one of the radical right candidates. Our results show that the electoral mobilization of the Romanian emigrants had deeper roots, reaching beyond the use of social media. The content of the radical right discourse was crucial in mobilizing the emigrant vote. No participant mentioned social media in reference to their voting behavior, and no overall differences in participants’ answers were evident according to the data we collected on social media use (see the note in Appendix 1). Their answers indicated that voting preferences were driven by the substantive issues outlined in this article (see Figure 1). In this case, social media was simply an efficient avenue to reach broad audiences and repeatedly expose citizens to the radical right populist rhetoric. It was the channel that delivered the messages that fueled the emigrants’ long-term frustrations with the failures of the establishment, a romanticized-nostalgic view of the nation, and long-distance nationalism.

These findings have broader implications that go beyond the case study covered here. In contrast with previous research which shows that the migratory context or the type of migrants makes a difference to the emigrants’ stance on homeland nationalism (Jakobson et al., 2023), we show that, at least for a diverse group of interviewees, these attitudes emerge across a range of different migratory spaces and types of migrants. Our interview participants included people who migrated for economic, education, family reunification, and lifestyle reasons. There were no observable differences in the answers provided by these emigrants according to their levels of education, length of stay, time of migration, or host country. Many answers showed that the Romanian emigrants had good knowledge of the political developments in their home country. This type of evidence aligns with the insights of those critics of the “globalization losers” thesis who demonstrate that it has limited potential in explaining support for radical right parties across countries (Art, 2011; Mudde, 2007). These observations are certainly valid for the present interview participants and further research could investigate the extent to which these variables correlate with political orientation or voting behavior on large-N samples.

While our study reaches important conclusions about how voter frustration with the establishment and deep transnational populism work as mobilization strategies for homeland radical right populism, there are at least three limitations. The first of these is that the interviews were conducted after the decision to annul the first round of the 2024 presidential elections. This may have intensified the anti-elite discourse, especially when levelled against the country’s president, who had set the annulment process in motion by declassifying secret files. Another limitation was the underexplored conceptual nature of the identity crisis the sovereignists had tapped into, as well as perceptions of it among these Romanian migrants. While the scope of this article is empirical, the answers to the interview questions suggest several nuances that deserve deeper theoretical development. Finally, we recruited the interviewees from countries where Georgescu and
Simion had the strongest diaspora support. While this provides rich evidence on the reasons why people supported the two candidates, it limits the cross-contextual variation. This had potential effects on the nuances we could observe and on the generalizability of findings to countries where their electoral appeal was more limited.

Further research could investigate the extent to which supply-side characteristics such as the format, frequency, or channels through which the messages are conveyed, influence emigrants' support for radical right populists. This could clarify whether social media platforms were crucial in shaping voter intentions, or something more complex was at work as hinted by the findings in this article. At the same time, a supply-side approach would allow testing of the extent to which the presence of these candidates and parties in the parliamentary arena can influence voters' views of radical right populists' abilities to fight the corrupt political elites – and their risk of becoming like them. Another avenue for research could seek to identify the reasons why emigrants have changed their voting behavior over time from supporting democratic and mainstream political parties to radical political actors in the recent elections. The sources of that change may be rooted both in the actions of political parties, which establish organizations abroad and mobilize the vote, and in specific elements of their rhetoric, and/or in the political attitudes developed by voters abroad.

## ORCID iD

Sergiu Gherghina https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6627-5598

## Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this article was supported by a project funded by the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) with the number PN-IV-P1-PCE-2023-0070.

## Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

## Data Availability Statement

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

## Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

## References

Akkerman T and Rooduijn M (2015) Pariahs or partners? inclusion and exclusion of radical right parties and the effects on their policy positions. *Political Studies* 63(5): 1140–1157.
Albertazzi D and McDonnell D (2008) Introduction. In: Albertazzi D and McDonnell D (eds) *Twenty-First Century Populism. the Spectre of Western European Democracy*. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–11.

Art D (2011) *Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe*. Cambridge University Press.

Bélanger É and Aarts K (2006) Explaining the rise of the LPF: issues, discontent, and the 2002 Dutch election. *Acta Politica* 41(1): 4–20.

Betz H (2017) Nativism across time and space. *Swiss Political Science Review* 23(4): 335–353.

Betz H and Johnson C (2004) Against the current – stemming the tide: the nostalgic ideology of the contemporary radical populist right. *Journal of Political Ideologies* 9(3): 311–327.

Blokker P (2005) Populist nationalism, anti-Europeanism, postnationalism, and the east-west distinction. *German Law Journal* 6(2): 371–389.

Branham JA and Wlezien C (2020) Do election campaigns matter? a comparative perspective and overview. In: Suhay E, Grofman B and Trechsel AH (eds) *The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion*. Oxford University Press, pp. 184–200.

Braun V and Clarke V (2021) *Thematic Analysis. A Practical Guide*. Sage Publications.

Carter E (2018) Right-wing extremism/radicalism: reconstructing the concept. *Journal of Political Ideologies* 23(2): 157–182.

Cuadrado I, García-Ael C, Molero F, et al. (2018) Acculturation process in Romanian immigrants in Spain: the role of social support and perceived discrimination. *Current Psychology* 40: 1466–1475.

Dobre M (2024) *Călin Georgescu Este Doar Un Comunist Nostalgiec*. PressHub. 3 December. Available at. https://www.presshub.ro/calin-georgescu-este-doar-un-comunist-nostalgiec-354989/

Elçi E (2021) Politics of nostalgia and populism: evidence from Turkey. *British Journal of Political Science* 52(2): 697–714.

Ellinas AA (2018) Media and the radical right. In: Rydgren J (ed) *The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right*. Oxford University Press, pp. 269–284.

Euronews (2024) *Campanie Cu Promisiuni Fanteziste. George Simion Semnează Contracte Cu Cetățenii Pentru Oferirea De Locuințe Ieftine*. Euronews. 23 July. Available at. https://www.euronews.ro/articole/campanie-cu-promisiuni-fanteziste-george-simion-semneaza-contracte-cu-cetatenii-p

Fieldhouse E and Cutts D (2009) The effectiveness of local party campaigns in 2005: combining evidence from campaign spending and agent survey data. *British Journal of Political Science* 39(2): 367–388.

Gardner JA (2009) *What are Campaigns For? The Role of Persuasion in Electoral Law and Politics*. Oxford University Press.

Gherghina S (2025) The lessons of Romania’s annulled presidential election. *Political Insight* 16(1): 32–35.

Gherghina S and Giugal A (2025) Cast (the vote) away: why Romanian emigrants support the radical right in home elections. *Party Politics*, (online first). DOI: 10.1177/13540688251387098.

Gherghina S and Mişcoiu S (2022) Faith in a new party: the involvement of the Romanian Orthodox church in the 2020 election campaign. *Politics, Religion & Ideology* 23(2): 226–242.

Gherghina S, Mişcoiu S and Soare S (eds) (2013) *Contemporary Populism: A Controversial Concept and its Diverse Forms*. Cambridge Publishing Scholars.
Gherghina S, Plopeanu A-P and Necula C-V (2020) The impact of socio-cultural integration on return intentions: evidence from a survey on Romanian migrants. *Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies* 18(4): 515-528.

Hennink M, Hutter I and Bailey A (2020) *Qualitative Research Methods*. Sage.

Horváth I and Anghel RG (2009) Migration and its consequences for Romania. *Südosteuropa* 57(4): 386-403.

Jakobson M-L, Saarts T and Kalev L (2020) Radical right across borders? the case of EKRE's Finnish branch. In: Kernalegenn T and van Haute E (eds) *Political Parties Abroad. A New Arena for Party Politics*. Routledge, pp. 21-38.

Jakobson M-L, Umpierrez de Reguero S and Yener-Roderburg IÖ (2023) When migrants become ‘the people’: unpacking homeland populism. *Contemporary Politics* 29(3): 277-297.

Kuyper J and Moffitt B (2020) Transnational populism, democracy, and representation: pitfalls and potentialities. *Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric* 12(2): 27-49.

López-Sala A (2019) ‘You’re not getting rid of us’. Performing acts of citizenship in times of emigration. *Citizenship Studies* 23(2): 97-114.

Marincea A (2025) Romania's 2024 election crisis: Neo-Legionarism's revival of the “Judeo-Bolshevism” myth and the Jouissance of punishment. *Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe* 33(1): 201-209, (online first).

Mişcoiu S (2012) *Au Pouvoir Par Le Peuple. Le Populisme Saisi Par La Théorie Du Discours. L'Harmattan*.

Mudde C (2007) *Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe*. Cambridge University Press.

Mudde C and Kaltwasser CR (2017) *Populism: A Very Short Introduction*. Oxford University Press.

O'Reilly K and Benson M (eds) (2009) *Lifestyle Migration Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences*. Farnham: Ashgate.

Pirro A (2015) *The Populist Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe*. Routledge.

Pop-Eleches G (2010) Throwing out the bums: protest voting and anti-establishment parties after communism. *World Politics* 62(2): 221-260.

Rico G and Anduiza E (2019) Economic correlates of populist attitudes: an analysis of nine European countries in the aftermath of the great recession. *Acta Politica* 54: 371-397.

Rooduijn M (2015) The rise of the populist radical right in Western Europe. *European View* 14(1): 3-11.

Sandu D, Toth G and Tudor E (2018) The nexus of motivation-experience in the migration process of young Romanians. *Population, Space and Place* 24(1): 1-16.

Scrivens R, Davies G and Frank R (2020) Measuring the evolution of radical right-wing posting behaviors online. *Deviant Behavior* 41(2): 216-232.

Spierings N and Jacobs K (2025) How populist are ethnic minorities? populist attitudes and voting for populist parties in the Netherlands. *Politics*, (online first). DOI: 10.1177/026339572513601.

Spotmedia (2024) *Vrea Călin Georgescu Să Desființeze Partidele Politice? Available at.* https://spotmedia.ro/stiri/politica/vrea-calin-georgescu-sa-desfiinteze-partidele-politice-explicatia-echipei-sale (accessed 2 March 2025).

Spruyt B, Keppens G and van Droogenbroeck F (2016) Who supports populism and what attracts people to it? *Political Research Quarterly* 69(2): 335-346.

Swank D and Betz H-G (2003) Globalization, the welfare state and right-wing populism in Western Europe. *Socio-Economic Review* 1(2): 215-245.
Szicherle P (2024) *Public Attitudes in Romania. Staying in the West with Some Doubts*. Available at. https://www.globsec.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/PublicAttitudesinRomania.pdf

Taggart P (2004) Populism and representative politics in contemporary Europe. *Journal of Political Ideologies* 9(3): 269–288.

Turcu A and Urbatsch R (2023) Is populism popular abroad? evidence from diasporas around the globe. *Party Politics* 29(3): 587–593.

Umpierrez de Reguero S and Jakobson M-L (2023) Explaining support for populists among external voters: between home and host country. *European Political Science* 22(1): 119–142.

van der Eijk C, Franklin M and Marsh M (1996) What voters teach us about Europe-wide elections: what Europe-wide elections teach us about voters. *Electoral Studies* 15(2): 149–166.