The exit polls conducted two hours before the voting booths closed pointed to an extremely tight race for the presidential position, which drove both candidates, Traian Basescu and Adrian Nastase to claim victory. Afterwards, Adrian Nastase adopted a more cautious stance, saying he preferred to wait for the official vote count.
The exit poll conducted by CURS for Antena 1 TV showed Adrian Nastase was leading Traian Basescu by 1.4% - 50.7% to 49.3%, whereas the poll drafted by MetroMedia, correlated with the one conducted by INSOMAR, for TVR (national television) showed an equal score - 50%-50%. CURS, the polling institute that had credited Adrian Nastase with a 1.4% head start at 19.00 then changed its results and also pointed to absolute equality (50% to 50%) after assessing the results gathered by 21.00.
Traian Basescu, leader of the D.A. (PNL-PD) Alliance said when the 19.00 results were released: "I only have one comment to make. We have won the elections. One has to learn how to lose, and, if this loss is the will of the Romanian people, then one has to assume it."
Basescu went on to explain why he was certain he had won the presidential elections - exit polls were based on votes cast by 19.00hrs. There were two more hours to be monitored by the time the voting booths closed, Basescu said, during which time more votes were to be cast in his favour, by the mainly urban and dynamic voters, who seem to prefer the D.A. candidate. Moreover, he also cited the votes of the Romanians living abroad, which had not been taken into account by the exit polls. In the first round, the votes cast by the Romanian citizens living abroad favoured Basescu.
In his turn, Adrian Nastase said, immediately after the preliminary results were announced, that he was leading Basescu by 160,000 votes, if the CURS poll was taken into account. The PSD-PUR candidate said he was convinced the head start was going to "consolidate after all the votes from the sections are counted." Furthermore, Adrian Nastase said he was going to be a "firm and strong president, for all Romanians, including those that voted against" him. Moreover, Nastase talked of voting polarization, which continued from the parliamentary elections to the presidential elections, which explains, in his opinion, the extremely tight score.
Half an hour later, with Traian Basescu having already claimed victory, Adrian Nastase said it was best to wait for the results derived from counting the votes from the voting booths. He stated this was the best and most respectable variant, even if the CURS poll credited him with a slight margin against Basescu.
The voter profiles drafted by the polling institutes revealed that women mostly voted for Nastase, whereas the male electorate preferred to vote for Traian Basescu. Moreover, the Ardeal region and Bucharest can be deemed as the turfs of Traian Basescu, as he had won a 10-percent head start in these areas. In his turn, Adrian Nastase gained a 10% advance in Moldova, and a 5-6% head start in Muntenia and Oltenia.
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