Poland: Liberal Candidate Takes Unconvincing Lead Into Presidential Runoff
By Claudia Ciobanu
Rafal Trzaskowski, Warsaw’s liberal mayor, narrowly won the first round of Poland’s presidential election on Sunday with 31.2 per cent of the vote, according to the State Electoral Commission, with 99 per cent of precincts counted.
Trzaskowski will face Karol Nawrocki, the candidate supported by the nationalist-populist Law and Justice (PiS) party who came second with 29.7 per cent, in a second round on June 1, as neither candidate won more than 50 per cent of the vote.
The difference between the two is narrower than Poland’s liberal camp had been hoping for and most pre-election polls had indicated. Furthermore, the two far-right candidates in the election polled better than expected – Slawomir Menzen was third with 14.9 per cent and Grzegorz Braun was fourth with 6.4 per cent – which could give a pointer to how the second round will play out.
Szymon Holownia, the marshal of the Sejm, was fifth with 5.0 per cent, while Adrian Zandberg and Magdalena Biejat, each representing a different new left party, got 4.8 and 4.2 per cent respectively.
According to an exit poll published by Ipsos on Sunday night turnout was 66.8 per cent of eligible voters.
At stake in this election is whether the coalition government headed by Donald Tusk can secure a cooperative president to replace the PiS-allied incumbent Andrzej Duda, who has been vetoing – or threatening to veto – key pieces of legislation the parliamentary majority wants to pass since it assumed office in late 2023.
Among such legislation is restoring the independence of the judiciary or giving women the right to an abortion, though, especially when it comes to women’s rights, some doubt the current parliament can pass them even if Trzaskowski does become president.
With Trzaskowski as president, Tusk could more easily continue to pursue an active and constructive role for Poland on major European issues, including the war in next-door Ukraine. Nawrocki is sceptical on the EU and presents himself as a faithful ally of US President Donald Trump.
The very small difference between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki and the good result for the far-right candidates – whose voters are more likely to support the latter if they show up to vote in the second round – will make the Tusk camp nervous. Most pre-election polls had indicated a more emphatic win for Trzaskowski, but the actual results in the first round would appear to now make Nawrocki the favourite.
In his speech on Sunday night, Trzaskowski promised that the first thing he would do if he wins the second round is to change the law to ensure a 2020 Constitutional Tribunal ruling tightening abortion law even further is reversed (although his language was vague enough to avoid a promise of full liberalisation of the abortion law). That in itself is a sign Trzaskowski is desperately courting the voters of the two left-wing candidates, without whom he can’t win.
The election campaign was fought primarily on the themes of security and immigration, which experts say may have contributed to boosting the far-right candidates.
“Looks like we’re going to need to add Rafal Trzaskowski to the lengthening list of centrist politicians who found out the hard way that when you try to compete with the radical right on their issues, someone benefits from the extra salience this gives to those issues, and it isn’t you,” Ben Stanley of SWPS University’s Faculty of Social Sciences in Warsaw commented on social media on Sunday night.
