The second round of the presidential elections in Romania saw socialist prime minister Victor Ponta run against liberal Klaus Iohannis.
The race was neck and neck last night, with exit polls showing Mr Iohannis staging a surprise comeback against the frontrunner, Mr Ponta, which could leave the result in the hands of voters abroad.
Backed by a well-oiled party machine, Mr Ponta had led opinion polls throughout the campaign and comfortably beat Mr Iohannis, an ethnic German, in the first round election on November 2nd.
However, last night’s exit polls showed a mixed picture, with two showing just over 50 per cent for Mr Ponta, two others showing the same for Mr Iohannis, and one split exactly down the middle.
Thousands of Romanian citizens, meanwhile, queued outside their country’s embassy in Dublin last night in an attempt to vote in the elections.
Potential voters from the estimated 20,000 population in Ireland queued on Waterloo Road to vote in the only polling venue available. Romanians living in Northern Ireland voted in Belfast.
Overnight wait
Some voters began queuing at midnight on Saturday to cast their ballot, and polls opened at 7am yesterday – with hundreds still waiting in line before voting closed at 9pm last night.
One woman told The Irish Times at 8pm last night she had travelled from Mayo to vote and was standing since 2.30pm. The queue was moving very, very slowly, she said. "The Romanian government knew just one place to vote in Ireland would not be enough."
Speaking shortly before polls closed last night, Romanian ambassador Manuela Breazu said the embassy did its utmost to accommodate the voters, but could not have envisaged the numbers.
“Probably at the end of the voting we will register the highest number of voters within the total number of Romanian embassies abroad,” she said.
In the first round of the elections, some 2,265 people voted in Dublin during the 14 hours available and 100 were turned away.
“This time it is a much bigger figure and we have much more voters registered, probably 3,000 by the end of the day and probably there will remain unfortunately some outside.” – (Additional reporting by Reuters)