Who are these "people" that you claim never heard of him before? Kind of sounds like BS to me because, you know, he won the election...
Won the election here means 22.94% of the vote, not long after having polled at 5%. He didn't even have a party.
This person went really quickly from unknown to anyone not into politics, to incredibly popular within a targeted media bubble and still unknown to anyone unfamiliar with that bubble.
When that "bubble" is at minimum one quarter of the country, maybe you need to reconsider who is in the bubble here.
it's not "at minimum one quarter of the country", the turnout was 52.56% of registered voters, so its at minimum 22.94% of 52.56% of 18 million, which is 11% of the total population of Romania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...