The executive board of the ruling Social Democratic Party, PSD, on Tuesday was due to announce that Victor Ponta will run for the party in the presidential elections in November, when Traian Basescu’s term expires.

While Ponta, 42, is widely tipped to win the vote, according to polls, the Prime Minister himself said the race was wide open.

“Will I win or not? I don’t think there’s anybody who can know that,” he said. “I join the battle with the idea of winning.”

A recent poll suggested that Ponta would get 46 per cent of the votes in the first round on November 2, well ahead of the president of the opposition National Liberal Party, Klaus Iohannis, who is tipped to come second with around 32 per cent of the votes.

The vote would then go to a second round in which Ponta would get 55 per cent of the votes, according to the same poll.

“Ponta is the main favourite for next elections. He is the leader of the main political party and has all the resources he needs: money, political support and the support of most of the media, both national and local,” Florin Negrutiu, a journalist from the daily newspaper Gandul said.

“Ponta is also most likely to win because the rightist opposition is capitalising more on Ponta’s own political mistakes than on promoting its own candidate,” he added.

The presidential elections on November 2 are important for Romania because the President has to right to nominate the Prime Minister, the chiefs of intelligence services and the heads of anti-corruption bodies.

The centre-left ruling coalition is increasingly confident that it will win after its solid performance in the European Parliament elections in May, when it won around 38 per cent of the votes.

The governing alliance is comprised of the Social Democratic Party and two minor parties. They have a clear majority in the parliament.

Opposition parties, meanwhile, hope that by combining forces they can reduce the dominance of Ponta and the PSD in Romanian politics.

The centre-right National Liberal Party, PNL, and the Democratic Liberal Party, PDL, on Saturday unanimously voted to unite to create a party capable of taking on Ponta’s coalition. The two parties will run a joint candidate in the presidential elections under the name of the Christian Liberal Alliance.

Nominations for presidential candidates are due to be made in early August, but Iohannis, 55, an ethnic German and mayor of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu, is the clear favourite.