December 12 (SeeNews) - Romania's Social Democratic Party (PSD) won 46.18% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 45.77% of the ballots for the Senate in Sunday's general elections, preliminary results of the central electoral commission indicated on Monday.
Speaking shortly after the release of the first exit polls, PSD leader Liviu Dragnea said that his party would go for an alliance with centre-right Liberal-Democrat Alliance (ALDE) led by Senate leader and former premier Calin Popescu-Tariceanu.
ALDE won 5.7% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 6.5% of votes for Senate, making it the fifth biggest party in Romania's next parliament, according to data of the central electoral commission, BEC, based on 99% of the ballots cast.
Dragnea declined to say who would be the party's nominee for prime minister. Dragnea himself cannot take the post as he has a two-year suspended jail sentence for a referendum fraud in 2012.
The right-wing National Liberal Party, PNL, will be the second biggest party in parliament after winning 20.29% support for the Chamber of Deputies and 20.41% for the Senate, BEC data showed.
Third came the centre-right Save Romania Union (USR) party, which got 8.87% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 8.82% for the Senate.
The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) garnered 6.35% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 6.26% of votes for the Senate.
Centre-right Popular Movement Party (PMP) got 5.4% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 5.6% for the Senate, respectively, while Far-right United Romania Party (PRU) and nationalist party Our Alliance Romania (ANR) could not pass the 5% barrier for entry into parliament.
Turnout stood at 39.49%, BEC said late on Sunday. It was 56.75% in the cities and 43.25% in rural areas.
Some 18.29 million citizens were eligible to vote in the third parliamentary elections after Romania's accession to the European Union in 2007 and the eighth since the fall of Communism in 1989. A total of 6,000 candidates were running for the 466 seats in parliament.
At the December 11 elections, Romanians voted on lists compiled by political parties in a proportional representation system last used in 2004, as opposed to uni-nominal majority voting used in 2012. For the first time Romanians abroad were able to vote by sending their ballot papers through the postal office.