President Klaus Iohannis and former Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă will face off in the second round of Romania's presidential election after a first round of voting on Sunday, according to preliminary results published by local media.

Iohannis, an independent supported by the National Liberal Party (PNL), received 37 percent of the vote, with Dăncilă, the leader of the Social Democrat Party (PSD), coming in second with 23 percent. Dan Barna, the candidate of the USR PLUS alliance, finished third with 14 percent.

Iohannis hailed the result as a vote against the PSD and called on Romanians to turn up again on November 24 and deny power to a party that has been a mainstay of Romanian politics since the fall of communism, but whose reputation has suffered of late because of concerns about corruption.

Dăncilă, however, said she was happy to have made it into the second round, despite all the criticism of the PSD.

The preliminary results take into account 99.86 percent of the polling stations in Romania and 52 percent of votes cast by Romanians living abroad, who in the past have changed the result.

Some 675,000 Romanians living outside the country voted, a fourfold increase on the last presidential election. That was due in part to those abroad being given three days to cast their vote rather than one, and also the ability to vote by post.

The measures were introduced this year to avoid huge queues at polling stations, as happened in the 2014 presidential ballot and in this May's European election.

Turnout, including those living abroad, was just shy of 47 percent, G4media reported. If that figure is confirmed, it would be the lowest presidential election turnout since the fall of communism in 1989.

USR PLUS's Barna said initially that he was still hoping the votes from abroad could put him in the second round, and called on those doing the counting to be vigilant, but eventually conceded he was too far behind to catch up. Barna's party was founded on an anti-corruption platform and came in third in the Romanian general election in 2016.

Iohannis would be the overwhelming favorite to beat Dăncilă in the second round of the vote as Romanians living abroad and those in urban areas tend to vote against the PSD.

This story has been updated.