Independent, Underdog, President: The Campaign That Redrew Romania’s Political Map
Good digital strategy — grounded in real testing, smart delivery, and bold creativity — can move the needle. Nicușor Dan’s presidential victory in Romania proves it.
When we joined Nicușor Dan’s presidential campaign, there were no certainties.
He was polling at around 10%. He had no party machine behind him. And in a system long dominated by established political forces, running as an independent for Romania’s highest office still felt like a political fantasy.
But he had something more powerful: a digital-first approach that could compete at presidential level. His candidacy tapped into a growing energy — in Romania, and especially in the Romanian diaspora — for clean leadership, evidence-based governance, and a break from the old politics.
Electica helped channel that energy into a digital campaign that delivered one of the most stunning electoral upsets in recent European politics: the first independent president in the country’s history, defeating a well-funded far-right movement in a 53.6% to 46.4% victory.
Digital done differently
This was a campaign that demanded discipline and precision. Every decision needed to be strategic, and every impression had to count when competing against traditional party infrastructure. That’s where Advocate, our self-serve adtech platform, came in. Through Advocate, the campaign team was able to:
- Launch and optimize ads across programmatic video, display, and YouTube, adapting quickly as the volatile political environment shifted following the annulment of the previous election
- Leverage our partnership with Swayableto test messaging and creative before scaling — ensuring message-market fit in a polarized political climate where every touchpoint mattered
- Target Romanian voters across the globe — including large diasporas in countries like Italy, Spain, the UK, and Moldova, by using Advocate’s browser-language and geo-targeting features to reach voters who would prove decisive in the final margin.
The campaign deployed a true omnichannel strategy, ensuring visibility across video, display, social, and search. Creative assets were refreshed regularly, with targeted variations for key audiences — women, rural voters, young voters, and diaspora communities — ensuring the right message reached the right people at the right moment.
The Scale of Presidential-Level Impact
Over the course of the campaign, the numbers tell their own story:
- Over 200 million impressions delivered
- More than 25 million programmatic video completions — at just 0.01€ per completed view and a 42% view-through rate
- 555,000+ clicks driving traffic to key campaign messages
- 21 million+ individuals reached, from Bucharest to Brussels
In the critical final sprint during the second round, we scaled even further when it mattered most:
- 100 million+ impressions in just over a week
- 19 million+ video completions
- 250,000+ clicks across YouTube and programmatic
- 13 million+ impressions to diaspora audiences, helping dramatically close the gap from the first round
- 3 million impressions in Moldova, where Nicușor Dan secured 88% of the vote
What This Victory Proves
The real story isn’t just in the impressive scale. It’s in what this campaign demonstrated about the future of democratic competition:
- Independent candidates can compete at the presidential level when they have access to sophisticated digital strategy and execution capabilities previously available only to party machines.
- Testing and optimization beat traditional political assumptions. Real-time message testing through Swayable enabled the campaign to adapt to rapidly changing political dynamics rather than relying on conventional wisdom.
- Effective digital strategy can help insurgent progressive candidates counter-balance a lack of traditional party infrastructure.
- Digital-first approaches can defeat well-funded populist movements by combining strategic precision with authentic storytelling and evidence-based decision making.
We built and ran this campaign with Advocate, proving that self-serve political adtech can democratize presidential-level campaign capabilities. We’re proud of what it achieved in defeating far-right populism at the ballot box.
And prouder still of what it represents: that good digital strategy — grounded in real testing, smart delivery, and bold creativity — can move the needle for democratic resilience across Europe and beyond.
Ready to prove that strategic digital campaigns can compete at any level? Discover how Electica’s platform-enabled approach empowers independent voices to challenge established political forces with precision targeting and real-time optimization.
