Romania's former Prime Minister Viorica Dancila | Bogdan Cristel/EPA Romanian ex-PM Dăncilă resigns as party leader Her announcement comes after a poor showing in Sunday’s presidential election.

Romania's former Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă quit as the president of the Social Democrat Party (PSD) late on Tuesday, following her poor showing in the presidential election Sunday.

"I understood my colleagues' opinion, the fact that they want a reset of the party and that someone must take responsibility for the elections result," she said at the end of a long meeting of the party's executive committee.

Dăncilă got some 3.2 million votes (33.5 percent) in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday, which she lost to incumbent Klaus Iohannis. It was the lowest number of votes ever received by a PSD presidential candidate in a second round over the past 30 years.

"We did everything we could to get a good result," she said. But ahead of crucial local and general elections next year, Dăncilă said she would resign to help the party reset.

Marcel Ciolacu, the president of the lower chamber of the Romanian parliament, will be the PSD interim president until a party congress in February elects a new leader.

The 52-year-old was deputy prime minister in the PSD government led by Mihai Tudose in the second half of 2017. He was close to former PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, but the relationship between the two soured when Tudose lost Dragnea's support as prime minister and resigned, Romanian news site G4media reported. Ciolacu succeeded Dragnea as head of the parliament's lower chamber after the latter was jailed in May.