The political center, eroded by nationalist forces aligned with President Donald Trump, held in the end. But only just.

Presidential elections Sunday in Romania and Poland — the two most populous countries on Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe — halted, or at least slowed, a hard-right breakthrough that many liberals had feared.

But they also pointed to growing discontent with established political parties, no matter their ideological tilt, a trend that is likely to generate future turbulence as old and predictable loyalties fade.

In Romania, a centrist mayor who campaigned as an independent untainted by close ties to two long-dominant mainstream parties — widely viewed as corrupt — defeated another outsider, a hard-line nationalist who aligned himself with Trump and had been seen as the front-runner.

Nicusor Dan, the mayor of Romania’s capital, Bucharest, won a decisive victory over George Simion in a runoff for Romania’s presidency, confounding expectations of a sharp turn to the right. He won 54% of the vote, boosted by an unusually high turnout of 64%. That turnout was nearly 10% more than in the first round, in which Simion trounced Dan and nine other candidates.

The result Sunday delighted mainstream political leaders across Europe and also the European Union’s executive arm in Brussels, whose president, Ursula von der Leyen, congratulated voters for having “chosen the promise of an open, prosperous Romania in a strong Europe.”

Simion, who Sunday responded to early results that showed him losing with cries of fraud and Trump-like vows to “stop the steal,” curbed his fury early Monday, conceding defeat and dropping complaints of irregularities in a somber video address.

Poland delivered a far less emphatic rebuff to EU-skeptic nationalism, with hard-right candidates, including a pugnacious anti-Semite, taking second, third and fourth places in the first round of a closely watched presidential race.

Rafal Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Poland, and an ally of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, still came in first. That secured him a slot in a runoff June 1 against the second-place finisher, Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian backed by Poland’s previous governing party, Law and Justice.

But the margin of his victory — 31.3% of the vote to Nawrocki’s 29.5%, according to the official count — was so small and support for hard-right candidates so strong that a repeat win for Trzaskowski in the runoff is far from certain.

Portugal election

Meanwhile, a center-right alliance is set to rule Portugal again after an election over the weekend, but a hard-right party with an anti-immigrant message has emerged as a powerful force.

In the snap election Sunday, the ruling Democratic Alliance of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro cemented its position as the dominant power in Portugal, allowing it to continue ruling as a minority government.

But the most striking result of the election was the surge of Chega, a hard-right party that won more than 22% of the vote, positioning it to be a potent movement that is upending the country’s politics. It will also likely put pressure on the government and push its stances on issues like immigration further to the right, analysts say.