The only thing standing between hard-right nationalist George Simion and the Romanian presidency is a mathematician who can see the odds aren’t great.

The numbers whizz is Nicușor Dan, now the independent centrist mayor of Bucharest, who goes into the May 18 second round of the presidential election as the underdog against a self-declared “Trumpist” who wants to cut military aid to Ukraine.

Simion, from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), secured a comfortable win in the first round, bagging a provisional 41 percent of the vote. The electoral map shows him coming first in an astonishing geographical sweep across Romania. He also secured the support of a whopping 61 percent of people voting abroad.

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While Simion was propelled to victory by long-standing frustration with the corruption and ineffectiveness of the old-order parties — the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and National Liberal Party (PNL) — the m ore urbanite Dan managed to score wins largely in big cities such as Bucharest, Brașov and Cluj, where he has more appeal.

Ultimately, Dan only squeaked into the second round, scoring 21 percent, edging out Crin Antonescu, the candidate from the governing coalition, which includes the PSD and PNL, who scored 20 percent.

The campaign ahead of the second round will, to some extent, reset the clock, as candidates attempt to poach support from other first-round candidates’ voters. Dan is already signaling that he will use the next two weeks to cast himself as the sole alternative to a hard-right leader who could destabilize an EU and NATO country of 19 million people.

Turnout in the first round was 53 percent.

Dan said on Monday the runoff vote will give voting Romanians the choice “between a democratic, stable and respected Romania in Europe — and a dangerous path of isolation, populism and defiance of the rule of law.”

He asked for the support of “all those who believe in the law, in truth, in education, in a modern economy, in strong partnerships with the free world.”

But the first round shows that he has a lot of ground to claw back.

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Simion styled himself as the successor of ultranationalist firebrand Călin Georgescu, whose shock victory in November led the election to be annulled over allegations of illegal campaigning and potential Russian interference.

Sunday’s first round showed that strategy was successful. Simion outperformed Georgescu’s November result; he even did better than Georgescu’s November vote share and his own taken together.

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That leaves Dan with a mountain to climb.

Analysts have previously pointed out that Dan’s support is largely concentrated among well-educated and well-off people in larger cities. Sunday’s election results showed that’s still the case.

His biggest challenge is that many of the more traditional voters who supported Antonescu in the first round could gravitate to Simion rather than him.

Speaking before the vote, MEP Siegfried Mureșan from PNL had predicted that Antonescu voters were less likely to switch behind Dan in a second round than the other way round.

“Some of these voters are liberal, some are conservative, some very conservative — and some, particularly the voters of the socialist party, are partly also elderly, less educated, partly also from the rural areas,” he said of the Antonescu voters that Dan now needs.

Beating Simion will require the independent Dan, who founded the centrist Save Romania Union (USR), not only to win round regular PNL and PSD supporters, but also those who voted for the leftist-turned-nationalist former Prime Minister Victor Ponta.

Dan will also have to rebuild bridges with the supporters of the centrist reformist Elena Lasconi, who campaigned hard against Dan after USR party leaders abandoned her in favor of him. She resigned as USR president on Monday.

Establishment candidate Antonescu also conspicuously failed to clearly call upon his supporters to rally behind Dan. Instead, he only told his voters to “consider for themselves which of the candidates the ideas I presented are compatible with” when he admitted defeat Sunday night.

By contrast, Hunor Kelemen, chairman of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania, part of the governing coalition, said his party would support Dan over the Romanian nationalist.

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Then Dan has the problems of the diaspora. Of the 9.4 million voters in Sunday’s first round, nearly 1 million voted abroad.

Simion won 61 percent of the votes abroad, while Dan came second with 25.4 percent.

The bulk of Simion’s foreign support came from northern and western Europe, where a majority of diaspora voters supported the far-right leader. Dan came out on top in most non-European countries, including the U.S. and Canada.

Crucially, just 14 percent of diaspora voters didn’t support either of the runoff candidates in the first round. That means there just isn’t a big pool of voters abroad for him to play for.

Dan has to win the home crowd.

Carmen Paun contributed reporting.