photo: @NawrockiKn on X, 2 January 2025
One of the few pollsters to correctly predict US president Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024 is tipping Conservative (PiS) candidate Karol Nawrocki for a surprise first round victory in Poland’s presidential election beginning May 18.
The polling agency Atlas Intel suggests Nawrocki holds a one percentage-point lead over Warsaw’s mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who had formerly led in the race.
The election comes as outgoing president Andrzej Duda, aligned with the opposition PiS, was completing his second and final term of office.
So far, the apparent favourite to replace him has been Trzaskowski, the candidate from prime minister Donald Tusk’s centre-left Civic Coalition (KO), Poland’s main ruling party.
Trzaskowski, who was runner up in 2020’s presidential election, has had between 29 and 34 per cent support in polls–but the race has recently tightened, with the PiS closing the gap.
The Warsaw mayor has struggled in debates and was recently also hit by a scandal involving supporters who allegedly used foreign money to place Facebook ads attacking his opponents.
His PiS rival Karol Nawrocki has trailed in second place throughout most of the campaign, with between 25 and 31 per cent support.
However after Trzaskowski’s recent troubles, Atlas Intel–who correctly predicted the outcome of the US presidential election–now gave Nawrocki a narrow one-point lead.
Nawrocki, an historian and head of the state Institute of National Remembrance, has never previously stood for elected office.
He was selected as a compromise candidate by PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński after former PiS PM Mateusz Morawiecki was deemed to carry too much political baggage after his time in office.
Another PiS contender, former education minister Przemysław Czarnek, was viewed within the party as too conservative to attract centrist voters in the elections’s second round.
However, Nawrocki has had his own troubles during the campaign.
It emerged he had purchased property from a senior citizen in return for taking care of him and failed to deliver his side of the bargain.
In a further twist, documentation of the affair apparently was leaked to Polish media from the security services.
The campaign’s dark horse may yet be Sławomir Mentzen, the candidate of a different opposition party, the hard right Confederation (Konfederacja).
Mentzen saw his support surge to just under 20 per cent in March, and at one stage it appeared he may even catch up with Nawrocki.
However, he has been hindered by his views on abortion and tuition fees. His current support ranged between 11 and 15 percent.
Among the remaining ten candidates, only four drew above 3 per cent in polling. One was Szymon Hołownia, the speaker of Parliament from centrist Poland 2050 party, part of Tusk’s ruling coalition. Another was Magdalena Biejat The Left, another of Tusk’s coalition partners. The third was Adrian Zandberg of the opposition left-wing “Together” party. Hard-right maverick Grzegorz Braun MEP, formerly a member of the Confederation party before leaving, was the last.
The PiS has attempted to make the election a referendum on Tusk’s government, arguing that Tusk has persecuted the opposition with politicised indictments, while failing to deliver promised tax cuts, and putting Poland’s alliance with the US in jeopardy.
The KO have fought the election on a platform of stopping the PiS returning to power, by reminding voters of alleged corruption and extremism in the PiS ranks.
Attitudes towards the EU have been an undercurrent in the campaign. The PiS has said it wants to see Europe as a union of sovereign states, while Tusk’s KO is more open to increased integration.
Otherwise the main parties, PiS and KO, have both made security and migration central to their campaigns.
On security, the ruling KO argued Poland needed to concentrate on building strong alliances in Europe, given uncertainties around the role the US will play in future.
The PiS has argued Poland should concentrate on its alliance with the US.
But both have backed high levels of defence spending, to deter a perceived threat from Russia.
On migration, Tusk’s KO has concentrated on tightening the country’s border with Belarus. The PiS have campaigned on stopping Germany from pushing back migrants into Poland.
Both parties have supported restricting rights to benefits for Ukrainian migrants and have resisted taking any migrants as part of the EU Migration Pact.
Issues such as abortion and LGBT rights have played a less significant role in the campaign.
The KO has maintained its stance of arguing for abortion on demand and the legalisation of same sex unions, while the PiS, more in line with the wishes of the Catholic Church, opposed both.
But the major question now hanging over the election was whether the result would be accepted by all parties, given the controversy over the legitimacy of the Supervisory Chamber of the Supreme Court.
The Supervisory Chamber was the body tasked with verifying election results and assessing any legal challenges relating to the elections.
It was created as part of PiS’s controversial judicial reforms when it was previously in power.
All of the body’s judges were appointed on recommendation of the National Judicial Council (KRS), another body the PiS overhauled in a manner the present government and the European Court of Justice have questioned.
The supervisory chamber did however validate the results of the 2023 parliamentary elections that brought the current government to power, as well as last year’s European and local polls.
In Poland, the president is not involved in the country’s day-to-day governance.
But he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He also appoints judges and ambassadors, and most importantly, has the right to veto legislation passed by parliament.
This is a power which could frustrate a government’s agenda.
This is why any defeat for Trzaskowski in the current election would damage Tusk’s chances of being returned to office in 2027.
Nawrocki has made clear he would oppose the Tusk government both on domestic and foreign policy.