Romanian legislative election, 1948

Parliamentary elections were held in Romania on 28 March 1948. They were the first elections held under undisguised Communist rule; King Michael had been forced to abdicate in December.

With all meaningful opposition having been eliminated, the People's Democratic Front, dominated by the Communist Romanian Workers Party (as the Communist Party had been renamed after merging with the Social Democrats) received 93.2% of the vote and won 405 of the 414 seats in the Great National Assembly.

The Communists, with the help of fellow traveler Prime Minister Petru Groza, had spent the previous two years after the rigged elections of 1946 consolidating their control. The turning point came in the second half of 1947, with the elimination of the largest remaining true opposition parties in the country. The National Peasants' Party was banned outright, while the National Liberal Party was intimidated into dissolving itself. The National Peasants' leaders, Iuliu Maniu and Ion Mihalache, were tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the government in the Tămădău Affair, and were both sentenced to life imprisonment. On 30 December, Groza and Communist Party boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej confronted Michael with the help of a detachment of troops from the pro-Communist Tudor Vladimirescu Division and forced him to abdicate. Hours later, the Communist-dominated legislature abolished the monarchy and proclaimed Romania a "people's republic"--thus marking the culmination of the Communists' four-year drive from being a banned party to complete power. A month before the elections, the Communists forced the Social Democrats to merge with them to form the Romanian Workers' Party. However, the few independent-minded Social Democrats were quickly pushed out, leaving the PMR as essentially the PCR under a new name.

From 30 December onward, Romania was effectively a one-party state. However, rump Liberal and Peasant parties appeared on the ballot. Between them, they won 3.5 percent of the vote and nine seats. As a result, this would be the last election in Romania where opposition parties were even nominally allowed to take part until the fall of Communism. Soon after the election, all parties outside the Front were banned, though the country had been a full-fledged Communist dictatorship since December.