With hours to go before Romanians go to the polls to choose a new president, all signs point to a race that will go down to the proverbial wire — and whose outcome will inarguably have a big impact on the European Union and the U.S.

According to a final AtlasIntel poll, centrist Nicusor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, has a wafer-thin edge (48.7 to 47.7 percent) in the runoff with George Simion — leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) Party and top vote-getter in the initial balloting May 4.

The contest Sunday was brought about when the Romanian Supreme Court last year stunned the world by canceling the first election in which the top vote-getter was nationalist newcomer Calin Georgescu. The cancellation last year had the connivance of the European Commission and was based on still-murky evidence that Georgescu received illegal funding from Russia. 

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