His grouping lost much of its supporters to the newly formed National Peasants' Party, and scored under 2% in the 1927 elections. Around 1930, Averescu began opposing the universal suffrage he had endorsed earlier, and issued an appeal to the intellectuals in order to have it discarded from legislation on the basis that it was easily influenced by the parties in power. He and his supporter, the pro-authoritarian poet Octavian Goga, received criticism from the left-wing Poporanist journal "Viața Românească", who claimed that Averescu had in fact provoked and encouraged widespread electoral irregularities during his time in office.