“I’d Vote Only to Save the World!” On the First-Round Absentees in the 2025 Romanian Presidential Elections

Electoral participation is often treated as a relatively stable individual trait shaped by long-term socio-demographic characteristics, political socialization, and institutional incentives. However, runoff elections provide a particularly revealing context for examining short-term and contingent forms of political mobilization. This paper investigates an empirically puzzling phenomenon observed during the May 2025 Romanian presidential elections: a significant number of citizens who abstained in the first round turned out to vote in the second round. By focusing on this intra-electoral variation in participation, the study seeks to explain why some individuals were mobilized only at the runoff stage and what this reveals about contemporary patterns of political engagement in Romania. The paper builds on and bridges several strands of the literature on electoral participation, including theories of selective mobilization, instrumental voting, negative partisanship, and affective polarization. While classical models emphasize resources, civic duty, and political efficacy as determinants of turnout, more recent research highlights the importance of short-term factors such as campaign dynamics, perceived electoral stakes, candidate polarization, and emotional responses. Runoff elections intensify these dynamics by simplifying the choice set, clarifying ideological alternatives, and increasing the perceived decisiveness of individual votes. The Romanian case offers a particularly fertile ground for analysis, given the coexistence of declining trust in political institutions, high volatility in voter behavior, and recurrent waves of protest-driven or anti-system mobilization. Empirically, the paper relies on a qualitative research consisting of 51 semi-directed interviews with second-round-only voters. In capturing the voters’ subjective motivations and perceptions, special attention is paid to the role of negative voting (voting against a candidate rather than for one), fear of undesirable political outcomes, elite cues, and last-minute campaign events. The findings suggest that second-round mobilization in Romania cannot be reduced to a mere increase in political interest or civic duty. Instead, it reflects a reactive and situational form of participation driven primarily by heightened perceptions of risk, polarization between finalists, and the framing of the runoff as a critical choice for the country’s democratic trajectory. Many late voters appear to have been mobilized by negative affect—such as anxiety or rejection—rather than by programmatic alignment or long-term partisan loyalties. Moreover, social networks and informal communication channels played a significant role in activating previously inactive citizens. By shedding light on the mechanisms behind second-round-only turnout, this paper contributes to broader debates on electoral volatility, democratic legitimacy, and the changing nature of political participation in Central and Eastern Europe. It argues that runoff elections function less as a continuation of the first round and more as a distinct mobilizational arena, with important implications for how we understand participation, representation, and democratic accountability in contemporary Romania.