Right-wing candidate Karol Nawrocki narrowly won Poland’s presidential runoff, defeating centrist Rafał Trzaskowski by a margin of 50.89 percent to 49.11 percent, according to the national electoral commission.
The result reversed an initial exit poll that had put Trzaskowski at 50.3 percent against Nawrocki’s 49.7 percent, within the survey’s 2 percentage point margin of error. Turnout reached 71.6 percent.
Nawrocki, who had the backing of the nationalist Law and Justice party and of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, campaigned on pulling Poland toward a more populist course, opposing the EU’s federalist tendencies and pledging to block Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. His victory deals a significant setback to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose coalition does not have the votes in parliament to override a presidential veto.
Joanna Sawicka, an analyst at the Polityka Insight think tank in Warsaw, said a Nawrocki presidency points to an open fight between the president and the prime minister, one that would complicate the government’s effort to pass its agenda.
The result also repeats a recent pattern. In 2020, incumbent Andrzej Duda, also aligned with Law and Justice, defeated Trzaskowski by 51 percent to 49 percent. Nawrocki entered the runoff under a cascade of disclosures about his past, among them claims that he had procured sex workers for hotel guests while employed as a guard, and that he had brawled as a football hooligan.
What the record shows is a Poland split between liberal cities and conservative smaller towns, a division the narrow result did little to close.
Sources
- Karol Nawrocki wins Poland's presidential election
- Nationalist Nawrocki wins Polish presidential election – POLITICO
