BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's next parliament election will be on Dec 11, the government said on Wednesday.
The ballot will produce a new parliament that will propose a prime minister to replace incumbent premier Dacian Ciolos who came to power last November with a caretaker team of technocrats for a limited, one-year mandate.
The new two-house parliament will be slimmer, with 466 legislators - 308 deputies, 134 senators, 18 deputies from ethnic minorities in Romania and six others representing Romanian's abroad.Opinion polls conducted in late July and in August showed the leftist Social Democrat Party (PSD) likely to garner most votes, around 37-38 percent followed by the centrist Liberals with 29-31 percent.
A PSD ally, the Liberal-Democrat grouping is set to get about seven percent, which if translated into parliament seats could prompt a return to power for the leftists with a comfortable majority.
The PSD-led government of former prime minister Victor Ponta resigned in November 2015 due to nationwide street protests following a deadly night club fire in Bucharest which had reignited concerns over widespread official corruption.