Romanian general election, 1937

← 1933

20 December 1937 (1937-12-20)

1939 →

113 seats in the Senate
All 387 seats in the Chamber of Deputies

Turnout

66.1%

	First party	Second party

Leader	Dinu Brătianu	Iuliu Maniu
Party	PNL	PNȚ
Leader since	1934	1937
Last election	105 S / 300 D	0 S / 29 D
Seats won	97 S / 152 D	10 S / 86 D
Seat change	8 S / 148 D	10 S / 57 D
Popular vote	1,103,353 D	626,612 D
Percentage	36.5% D	20.7% D

	Third party	Fourth party

Leader	Corneliu Zelea Codreanu	Octavian Goga
Party	TpȚ	PNC
Leader since	1933	1935
Last election	New party	0 S / 18 D
Seats won	4 S / 66 D	0 S / 39 D
Seat change	4 S / 66 D	0 S / 21 D
Popular vote	478,378 D	281,167 D
Percentage	15.8% D	9.3% D

General elections were held in Romania in December 1937. The Chamber of Deputies was elected on 20 December, whilst the Senate was elected in three stages on 22, 28 and 30 December. The National Liberal Party remained the largest party, winning 152 of the 387 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 97 of the 112 seats in the Senate elected by universal male vote, although it lost its majority in the Chamber. The party's unexpectedly poor showing (failing to obtain 40% of the vote, which would have automatically guaranteed them a large parliamentary majority) meant they could not form a coalition with either their arch-rivals the National Peasants' Party or with the Iron Guard's Everything for the Country Party, King Carol II invited the poet Octavian Goga to form a government, despite the fact that his National Christian Party finished fourth and had an avowedly anti-Semitic platform.

Unlike all previous Romanian elections organised by partisan governments, the 1937 result did not provide the governing party--in this case, the National Liberals--with an outright majority. As it turned out, this would be the last election held under the nominally democratic 1926 electoral law, and the last free election of any sort until 1990. It was also the last election held under universal male suffrage.

At Goga's request, Carol dissolved parliament on 18 January 1938 with a view toward holding new elections that winter. However, in February, Carol suspended the Constitution, canceled the elections, and instituted a royal dictatorship. By the next elections held under the 1923 Constitution, in 1946, Romania had passed through three dictatorships and a fourth, Communist one was rapidly consolidating.

During the first round, clashes occurred at Orhei and Târgu Mureş, killing four and leading to 300 arrests. After the vote, the Electoral Commission surprised observers by deciding, in its allocation of seats by proportional representation, to count the entire country as one district, rather than use smaller districts, as had been the norm.

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