Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has warned “the game for everything is beginning” after a first-round presidential election saw his candidate finish just 1.5 points ahead of his populist rival.
Liberal pro-EU Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski saw a large poll lead vanish to finish on 31.2 per cent, according to a late projection on Monday morning.
Campaign slips, and perceptions of him as a channel for their frustration with the Tusk administration, saw voters throw support behind his chief rival, Karol Nawrocki. A conservative historian and candidate for the national conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, Nawrocki finished with 29.7 per cent.
The two candidates will now face each other in a second round run-off on June 1st with huge consequences for Poland’s future path on defence and EU affairs.
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“The game for everything is just beginning, a hard fight for every vote,” wrote Tusk on Twitter/X. “These two weeks will decide the future of our country. Therefore, not a step backward.”
Tusk’s hope is that a Trzaskowski win can end the legislative standoff with the existing PiS-allied president Andrzej Duda and allow his government deliver key policy promises and complete a rollback of PiS-era judicial reforms.
Given widespread presidential powers to veto legislation, however, another term with a PiS-allied president would stymie that agenda and extend political uncertainty in Warsaw.
“We want a Poland that is sovereign, strong, rich and secure,” said PiS candidate Nawrocki, thanking supporters for not believing the “propaganda, falsehoods, and lies, who did not give in to the power of Donald Tusk’s state institutions”.
A new, second round poll on Monday morning showed him on 44 per cent, just two points behind Trzaskowski on 46 per cent.
“This shows how strong and determined we have to be,” said Trzaskowski.
He has acknowledged voter frustrations with the Tusk administration – a broad coalition including conservatives, liberal and leftist parties – and promised to “accelerate” reform promises on housing, judicial reform and a rollback of strict abortion laws, among Europe’s tightest.
On Monday the two lead candidates turned their attention to securing endorsements – and vote transfers – from 11 other failed candidates. Trzaskowski hopes for backing from eliminated leftist and liberal candidates, some in power with Tusk, who each took between four and five per cent support.
Amid a global surge in right-wing populism, meanwhile, Nawrocki’s campaign to “save Poland” is a pitch to hard-right candidates, Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun. The former has called for a total abortion ban, even in rape cases; the latter used a fire extinguisher last year to put out Hanukkah candles in parliament. Together they secured nearly 21 per cent of the vote – a historical high.
Nawrocki heads Poland’s archive of communist and Nazi-era files and visited US president Donald Trump during his campaign. His support rose even after a series of scandals, prompting analysts to suggest voters are more concerned with security pressures from Russia and open to Nawrocki’s promise to prioritise Poles in public services over Ukrainians and other refugees.
The opposition PiS party, in power for two terms until December 2023, has pitched Nawrocki as the man to prevent unchecked power for Tusk, whom they frame as a vassal of Berlin and Brussels.
Meanwhile Trzaskowski is portrayed to PiS voters as a big city liberal whose support for LGBT marches, and campaign to remove crosses from public buildings endanger traditional Polish values.
“The stakes are massive,” said former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski on TVPInfo. “We are fighting a battle on whether Poland will be on the side of European democracies or on the side of European troublemakers.”
