RomânăWe have been monitoring the presidential campaign on TikTok since January 2025 and have observed mostly positive trends in visibility for Crin Antonescu and George Simion through inauthentic accounts of the CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour) type, but also rapid increases in the number of followers for the official accounts of Victor Ponta and Nicușor Dan (a candidate who reported to national authorities about alleged sabotage of his accounts on several networks).
DIRECTION 1 – IN AUTHENTIC PROMOTIONAL ACCOUNTS
In the last 30 days, we found over 100 million views generated by 600 CIB videos. Of these, we attributed 270 inauthentic videos promoting candidate George Simion and 180 videos from inauthentic networks promoting Crin Antonescu. For the other candidates – Nicușor Dan, Victor Ponta, and Elena Lasconi – the number of videos of this type is significantly lower (less than 50 appearances).
DIRECTION 2 – GROWTH OF OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS
Another potential significant issue we identified is the growth patterns of followers on the official accounts of candidates, where the largest increase is that of Victor Ponta, who gained approximately 100,000 new followers on TikTok between April 20 and 24, followed by Nicușor Dan, who gained approximately 30,000 new followers during this period. 000 new followers on TikTok, followed by Nicușor Dan, who gained approximately 30,000 followers during this period.
Candidate Nicușor Dan has also filed complaints with the authorities alleging an invasion of his social media accounts by inauthentic networks in an attempt to sabotage his presidential campaign.
What do we observe in this regard?
- The pattern of follower growth
On the one hand, Nicușor Dan started with 32,400 followers in September 2024, after winning the Bucharest City Hall election. He used the TikTok platform throughout the year to promote his political agenda and gradually build an active audience.
On the other hand, Victor Ponta starts with less than half the number of followers of Nicușor Dan, with a much lower public presence. However, by March 25, 2025, Ponta manages to catch up with him and then surpass him by about 70,000 followers, with increases of about 30,000 new followers per day between November and December. We only saw this type of growth again in November-December, at the height of the electoral scandal.
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- Number of views on official pages in the last 30 days
Here, Victor Ponta’s account is way ahead, getting 23.8 million views on his own videos (+138 new ones) in the last 30 days with an account that went from 80 to 200,000 followers. His account is followed by 11.7 million views (+63 new videos) recorded by Nicusor Dan, who has 155,000 followers, and George Simion with 9.2 million views (15 new videos) and 1.3 million followers. (full data in the report)
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- Analysis of comments on official pages from videos in the last 30 days
Here, we identified recurring comment patterns and found duplicate comments
Victor Ponta 47.6% with potential to be duplicated – Out of 33,623 comments, 16,025 are comments with potential to be duplicated.
Nicusor Dan 37.02% with potential to be duplicates – Out of 16,004 comments, 5,925 have the potential to be duplicates
George Simion 23.1% with potential to be duplicates – Out of 9,385 comments, 2,173 have the potential to be duplicates
*We considered a duplicate comment to be any comment posted at least five times with the same text and symbol pattern.
We used George Simion’s account for comparison, as it is the largest political TikTok account in Romania with 1.3 million views and 700,000 followers since October, most of which were gained between November and December. At this moment, his official account is in a period of stagnation, posting far fewer videos compared to the other candidates. However, we consider it relevant to compare him with a candidate outside this phenomenon of accelerated growth that we are observing with Victor Ponta and Nicusor Dan.