BUCHAREST, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- Romania's opposition Social Democratic Party has won a landslide victory in the country's quadrennial parliamentary elections, after it took more than 45 percent of the votes on Sunday, exit polls show.
According to the results of the two accredited exit polls, which were announced upon the end of voting at 9:00 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), the Social Democrats has a significant lead over the pro-presidential National Liberal Party, which won the second most votes. The Liberals took about 21 percent of the votes for the both chambers of the new parliament.
The Save Romania Union, a party founded several months ago by the mathematician and former civic activist Nicusor Dan, won around 9 percent of the votes for the parliament.
Other parties hopeful to enter the new parliament include the Liberal Democratic Alliance, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania and the People's Movement Party.
Two exit polls were carried out in parliamentary elections on Sunday, one by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy and the other was jointly carried out by the Center for Urban and Regional Sociology and the Socio-Behavioral Study Group Avangarde.
If the exit polls reflected actual results of the elections to be released in the coming days, the Social Democrats is likely to form a parliamentary majority with the Liberal Democratic Alliance, that would allow it to name the future prime minister.
"The vote today shows a clear choice of Romanians and I believe that nobody has any doubts regarding who won the elections," said Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea after the results of the exit polls were released.
"I want to assure all Romanians that what we have presented in our economic programme in this electoral campaign will be put in practice by a Social Democrat government," Dragnea said.
The nationwide voter turnout in the parliamentary elections on Sunday stood at 39.49 percent, according to the Central Electoral Bureau.
As many as 6,477 candidates, including candidates from more than a dozen political parties and independent candidates, are running seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The new parliament will have 136 senators and 326 deputies, including 308 deputies to be elected by voters and 18 designated ones representing ethnic minorities.
A party must pass a 5-percent threshold to win seats in the parliament, while in the case of electoral alliances, 8 to 10 percent according to the number of coalition parties.
