Moldova’s pro-European president Maia Sandu won reelection on Nov. 3 in a tense run-off. This election cycle highlighted the power of the diaspora vote, as well as the limits of Russian influence on Moldova’s politics.
In explainers published in October and in March 2024, we detailed the history of Moldova’s east-west political cleavage. These divisions have left Moldova in an intense competition between pro-European and pro-Russian political forces – both homegrown and foreign. This time, a majority of Moldovan voters endorsed Sandu’s push for E.U. integration over her challenger Alexandr Stoianoglo’s promise to “balance” relations with both Brussels and Moscow.
In this critical Nov. 3 runoff between the two top presidential candidates, Sandu won by a substantial margin – 55.35%, compared to Stoianoglo’s 44.65%, with a turnout of 54.34% of voters. Her victory, in large part, reflects active turnout among Moldova’s largely pro-European diaspora. Sandu’s victory is all the more impressive considering the extensive influence campaign mounted by Kremlin-friendly forces to sway the vote.
Pro-Russia groups sought to pull voters eastward
In the first round of the election, Moldova’s pro-Russian political camp – led by fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor – advanced a number of little-known candidates. Many saw this move as an effort to siphon votes away from Sandu, the incumbent, as well as thwart her proposed constitutional referendum. The referendum, which proposed amending Moldova’s constitution to include E.U. membership as a strategic objective, passed in the Oct. 20 voting round. Although the margin was very thin, this was a major victory for Sandu. But Sandu failed to secure a majority of votes herself, sending her to a run-off against second-place finisher Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor with a checkered reputation.
Both election rounds were tainted by Russian interference. Journalists from the Moldovan newspaper Ziarul de Gardă spent months undercover to expose Shor’s network of “activists,” who received bank transfers from Moscow in exchange for attending protests and convincing their contacts to vote against Sandu and against the referendum. (See the ZdG’s impressive investigations here and here.) About a week after the first voting round, media outlets across the country received an anonymous list with the names of thousands of people who allegedly work for Shor.
Russia’s meddling was evident in several ways
During the Oct. 27 presidential debate between the two frontrunners, a week before the second round of voting, Sandu accused Stoianglo of being “Moscow’s man.” Although he denied any relationship to Moscow, journalists uncovered evidence of Stoianglo’s connections to Shor, who is based in Russia and recently gained Russian citizenship. Stoianoglo previously boycotted the E.U. referendum, claiming he wasn’t opposed to European integration – but did want to protest against the Sandu government. (Ironically, his youngest daughter is currently working as a supervision analyst at the European Central Bank.)
Religion proved to be another important tool of Russian influence in Moldova. Over the summer, the Moscow Patriarchate funded “free pilgrimages” to Russia for hundreds of priests and parishioners. Moldova is a highly religious country: 90% of the population identify as Orthodox, and the vast majority belong to the Moldovan Orthodox Church. This church, in turn, is subordinate to the Russian patriarch Kirill – a powerful political operator and outspoken supporter of the war against Ukraine. Before the run-off election, a member of Putin’s United Russia party urged a group of Moldovan priests who had recently returned from Russia to convince their fellow Christians to vote against Sandu.
Russian meddling made headlines on the day of the run-off, as videos spread on social media of organized transportation of Moldovan voters to polling stations in Belarus and Azerbaijan (illegal under the country’s electoral code). There was also controversy over polling stations inside Russia: This year, the number was cut to just two in the capital, Moscow, with Moldovan officials claiming that they could not guarantee proper security measures in other Russian cities. The Socialist Party (PSRM) – the main opposition party, which backed Stoianoglo – criticized this restriction, arguing that far more polling stations were open in European countries where the number of Moldovan voters is lower.
It’s important to note, however, that much of the pro-Russian sentiment in Moldova is genuine, and not explicitly a product of disinformation and fraud. As we explained in our recent article, many Moldovans retain linguistic, cultural, and economic ties to Russia – and are heavy consumers of Russian media.
Moldovans who’ve left the country were pivotal to the election outcome
With the E.U. referendum barely passing on Oct. 20, analysts expected that the large Moldovan diaspora would be decisive in the final round of the presidential election on Nov. 3. And they were correct. As results from polling stations across Moldova rolled in, Sandu lagged behind Stoianoglo, especially among Russian-speaking minorities in the north and south of the country. But when ballots from diaspora voters were processed later that night, Sandu quickly closed the gap, finishing with 55.35% of the total tally.
Breaking down this figure reveals a striking divergence between the political preferences of Moldovans at home versus those who live abroad. Sandu earned just 48.67% of votes inside Moldova, but 82.92% of votes cast outside the country. (She earned over 50% of votes in Moldova if we exclude the overwhelmingly pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia.) Not only is Sandhu extremely popular with the diaspora – especially among Moldovan citizens living in western Europe – but she also managed to mobilize supporters in large numbers. Over 300,000 Moldovans voted abroad – 19.4% of all votes cast in the election!
Cases in which diaspora voters sway the result of an election are unusual – but not unheard of. For example, the diaspora has played a major role in Romanian elections since 2009, when their votes decided the presidential race.
Unsurprisingly, the pro-Russian PSRM disputed the outcome of the runoff, declaring Stoianglo the “real winner” and dismissing Sandu as an “illegitimate president, recognized only by her sponsors and supporters abroad.” Shor, meanwhile, announced that he would challenge the results. Although these inflammatory statements are unlikely to pose a threat to Sandu in the short term, they suggest that in the future, pro-Russian politicians may try to restrict the diaspora’s ability to vote.
Sandu out-performed our predictions
Sandu’s victory may have been celebrated across western Europe, but it did not come entirely as a surprise, given earlier trends. We used the results of the first round of voting and data from a public opinion poll conducted in September-October 2024, which asked respondents about their likely vote choice in a hypothetical Sandu-Stoianoglo runoff, to predict the outcome of the second round. Based on our analysis and second-round turnout levels, we expected Sandu to beat Stoianoglo, by approximately 53% to 47%. In fact, Sandu did even better than we expected, earning 55.35% of the vote.
Why did Sandu outperform our expectations? It’s impossible to say definitively, given the available data. But here are a few possible reasons.
Kremlin-aligned groups may have influenced the first round. Relatively unknown Shor-backed candidates like Irina Vlah (5.4% of the votes) and Victoria Furtună (4.5%) claimed a non-trivial number of votes that day. But even though they – and several other minor pro-Russian candidates – either endorsed Stoianoglo or called for a vote against Sandu, their votes weren’t enough to tip the needle in favor of Stoianoglo. One possibility is that Sandu managed to siphon off some of their votes in the second round. Some Moldovans may have been persuaded by her strong debate performance and Stoianoglo’s rhetorical stumbling, which inspired a flood of internet memes.
Alternatively, public scrutiny in the wake of the investigative reports about Shor’s bribery network could also have pushed voters toward Sandu – or at least convinced some Shor activists to keep a lower profile, effectively curtailing vote buying in the second round. The polling stations for voters from the pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria were a likely exception. Turnout in these polling locations jumped by over 60% between the two rounds, and earlier investigations had exposed conspicuous vote-buying.
Sandu also seems to have been especially effective at mobilizing voters to show up to the polls. (This catchy voting anthem, inspired by a popular Moldovan song, may have helped.) The second-round turnout was 54.34%: nearly 3 percentage points higher than in the first round, and about 1.6 percentage points higher than in the second round of the 2020 presidential election, when Sandu beat incumbent president Igor Dodon of the pro-Russian PSRM. Crucially, second-round turnout among diaspora voters was more than a third higher than in the first round, and over 20% higher than the record set in the second round of the 2020 presidential election.
A warning about the 2025 parliamentary elections
We end this article with the same cautionary note as our previous explainer. Democratic forces may have prevailed in this election, but Moldova’s struggle to maintain its independence in the face of Russian influence – and interference – is far from over. The 2025 parliamentary elections are on the horizon, and are likely to pose an even greater challenge for Sandu and Moldova’s European aspirations.
The parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place no later than July 2025. A lot can happen between now and then: another winter without access to Russian gas; battlefield surprises in neighboring Ukraine; and eight more months for pro-Russian forces to cultivate support and stoke resentment against Sandu and her party, PAS. An added concern is the election of Donald Trump to the White House. Many in Europe fear he will weaken the NATO alliance and embolden Russia in its maximalist agenda for Ukraine.
In a public opinion poll conducted last month, 27.1% of voters inside Moldova said they would support Sandu’s PAS “if parliamentary elections were held tomorrow.” But another 24.1% expressed support for either the Shor-backed Victory Bloc or the Socialist Party, and 15.9% said they didn’t know. With so many uncertainties, any predictions about the 2025 parliamentary elections would be premature. Suffice it to say that Sandu and PAS have their work cut out for them – but then again, so does Moscow.
Isabelle DeSisto is a PhD candidate in politics at Princeton University.
Grigore Pop-Eleches is professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.
Stay up to date on all things politics and political science. Sign up for Good Authority’s weekly newsletter by entering your email address in the box below.
.jpg#file){kind=link}