After the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Soviet authorities had increased their presence in Romania, as Western Allied governments resorted to expressing largely inconsequential criticism of new procedures in place.

[13][14] Demonstrators, many of them young students, flocked to the plaza in front of the palace to express their solidarity with the monarch (on the Orthodox liturgics Saint Michael's Day); however, armed groups attacked the Ministries of Interior and Propaganda, as well as the headquarters of pro-government organisations, including the General Confederation of Labour and the Patriotic Defense.

[13][14][16] The government declared a national day of mourning, and state funerals were held on 12 November for seven of the victims, hailed as fighters for democracy and independence, "assassinated by bands of fascist killers".

[17] In January 1946, the "Royal strike" itself ended following the Moscow Conference, which made US and British recognition of the government dependent on the inclusion of two politicians from the main opposition parties.

[20] The Senate was traditionally considered reactionary by the PCR, with historian Marian Ștefan arguing the measure was meant to facilitate control over the legislative process[21] The BPD government also removed the majority bonus, awarded since 1926 to the party that had obtained more than 40% of the total suffrage.

[10] The date of the election coincided with the fourth anniversary of Operation Uranus, the moment when Nazi Germany and Romania suffered a major defeat on the Eastern Front at the Battle of Stalingrad.

[29] In early November 1946, Communist sources show that the BPD counted an important part of the gains in the rural areas to be obtained from the Front's electorate (the poor and middle peasant categories).

[citation needed] The Social Democratic Party (PSD), which had been drawn into close collaboration with the PCR as early as 1944 (as part of the United Workers' Front, Frontul Unic Muncitoresc), had also seen a steady growth in numbers;[31] the PSD was by then dominated by the pro-PCR wing of Ștefan Voitec and Lothar Rădăceanu, who purged the staunchly Reformist group of Constantin Titel Petrescu in March 1946 (leading the latter to establish his own independent group).

[40] New legislation provided for the end of universal male suffrage, proclaiming the right to vote for all citizens over the age of 21, while restricting it for all persons who had held important office during the wartime dictatorship of Conducător Ion Antonescu.

[45] As early as May, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Constantin Vișoianu complained to Adrian Holman, the British Ambassador to Romania, that the BPD had ensured the means to win the elections through fraud.

[46] According to the American diplomat Burton Y. Berry, Groza had admitted to this procedure during an alleged conversation with a third party, indicating that the fraudulent percentages were the goal of competition between two sides — him and the PCR's general secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej formed one, while a "Cominternist section" around Emil Bodnăraș represented the other; according to Berry, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej were satisfied with a less intrusive fraud and, thus, a more realistic result (60%), while Bodnăraș aimed for 90%.

[49] Historian Adrian Cioroianu assessed that the dissemination of optimistic rumors contributed to accustoming the public to the idea that the government could obtain the majority of the votes, and made the ultimate result less questionable in the eyes of observers.

[52] Kavtaradze expressed concern that information on this topic had leaked out to opposition parties in various locations, and that the PCR had thus failed to fully respect the "conspiratorial character" it had decided to use.

[57] In a discussion with Soviet embassy staff, PCR leader Ana Pauker claimed that this had been worsened by administrative incompetence, which had led to insufficient supplies of wheat and bread at the central level, and to various irregularities in transport over the national railway system which she attributed to sabotage.

Pauker attested that, in several places, the state was frustrated in its attempt to purchase grain from peasants, who argued that the price was too low, and that this led to the supplies being insufficient.

[60] Pauker's testimony stressed that, while problems in applying the land reform damaged the BPD's image in some counties in rural regions, its main support came from the formerly landless peasantry.

[20] The period of campaigning and the election itself were witness to widespread irregularities, with historian and politician Dinu C. Giurescu claiming violence and intimidation were carried out both by squads of the BPD and by those of the opposition.

[64] Prior to the election, freedom of association had been severely curtailed through various laws; according to Burton Y. Berry, Groza had admitted to this, and had indicated that it was in answer to the need for order in the country.

[66] In regard to the arrest of several Romanian employees of the American Embassy in Bucharest, Groza reportedly claimed that he had tried to set them free, but the "extremists in the government" had opposed this move.

[67] According to Berry, the Premier had stated that he assessed Romania's commitment to freedom of election in opposition to the Western Allied requirements, and based on "the Russian interpretation of «free and unfettered»".

At a time when the airplanes of the Romanian Air Force were used to drop pro-Groza leaflets over the city of Brașov, EPC activists were alarmed to find out that the manifestos had been secretly replaced with PNȚ–Maniu propaganda.

[76] By the time of the election, the Groza cabinet decided not to allow reserve and recently discharged soldiers to vote at special Army stations, in order to prevent "tainting" the "real results".

"[77]Immediately after the elections, pro-Communist General Victor Precup [ro], commander of the Fourth Army Corps, ordered the arrest of General Gheorghe Drăgănescu of the Second Division of Vânători de munte in Dej, alleging that, during the voting, he exaggerated the extent of unrest among local peasant population in Dej, which was engaged in Antisemitic and Anti-Hungarian violence, as a means to draw the interest of central authorities and Western Allied supervisors.

[82]According to Anton Rațiu and Nicolae Betea, two collaborators of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, the elections in Arad County were organized by a group of 40 people (including Belu Zilber and Anton Golopenția); the president of the county electoral commission collected the votes from local stations and was required to read them aloud—irrespective of the option expressed, he called out the names of BPD candidates (Pătrășcanu and Ion Vincze, together with others).

[85] The report also confirms that the BPD's popularity had been much higher in the urban areas than with the peasantry,[85] while, despite expectations, women in the villages, under the influence of the priests, preferred voting for the PNȚ.

[29] While securing the votes of the state apparatus and the Jewish petite bourgeoisie, the BPD was not able to make notable gains inside the categories of traditional PNȚ supporters.

[29] Later the same month, the British government of Clement Attlee, represented by Adrian Holman, issued a note informing Foreign Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu that, due to the numerous infringements, it did not recognize the result of elections in Romania.

[66] Giurescu compares this with the plan of a federation between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, advocated by Georgi Dimitrov and Josip Broz Tito, which was frustrated by the opposition of Joseph Stalin, and discarded altogether following the Tito-Stalin Split.

In his speech on the occasion, while expressing a hope that elections had voted in a new type of legislative, he stressed that it was important to eliminate the spectacle of useless blabber and personal issues from this Assembly and for these deputies to dedicate themselves, during the rather expensive session […] to an intensive activity.

[91] The National Liberal Party-Tătărescu, which issued a critique of the Groza administration at around the same time, was forced out of the government and from the BPD,[92] only to be implicated in the Tămădău scandal and have its leadership replaced with one more loyal to the PCR.