Poland concluded this Sunday, and will decide whether to culminate or move away towards the margins, to emerge as a possible bastion of Trumpism in Europe. The mayor of Warsaw, the Europeanist Rafal Trzawski, and the ultra -nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki to the second round of the presidential elections that will decide the political course of the country. The projections published after the 23.00, which are based on the polls at the end of Ipsos for the three main television, together with the scrutiny of the first electoral tables, have not settled the result, but give Nawrocki a minimal advantage, with 50.7% of votes, compared to the liberal, with 49.3%. The difference is so small, with just 1.4 points, which moves in the margin of error.
Nervousness has not dissipated in the face of data that only confirms the deep polarization of a party party in half. In the Electoral Barracks of Trzawski, in the Warsaw Ethnographic Museum, the tension was breathed before 21.00, when the polls were announced on foot of the urn, which gave him an advantage of 0.6 points. Despite the unfinished of that figure, the militants and supporters exploded in applause and cheers. “We have won! We have won, although the phrase ‘as the edge of a razor’ will enter forever in Polish politics,” Trzawski proclaimed. Po’s leader promised to work to unite the country and be the president of all Poles.
Nawrocki hoped that the scrutiny would turn to those first data. “We are going to win tonight,” he said before his. “We will win and save Poland. We will not allow the Donald Tusk government to close the circle and that the monopoly of the bad government – the government that does not care about public finances, the government that snatches our great dreams and aspirations – is consolidated,” he added.
The Head of State has no government powers, but has a fundamental weapon: veto power in the legislative process. A Nawrocki victory, the candidate endorsed by Law and Justice (PIS), would imply, however, liberal. Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s ultraconservatives would try to immediately start the way back to power. If Trzawski finally defeated himself in his second attempt to be president, the prime minister, the liberal of center -right Donald Tusk, will achieve the impulse he has been waiting since he returned to power in front of a liberal coalition in December 2023.
With the popularity of the executive in recoil, Tusk plays his leadership in these elections, both in Poland and the EU. Tonight the leader did not go to the museum where his game congregated.
This Sunday’s participation rate is read as a track, in the absence of more solid data – the final scrutiny will be known foreseeably on Monday. It is interpreted that a participation greater than 70% is favorable for the liberal candidate. According to Ipsos, 72.8% of the 29 million voters called the polls have voted.
In an electoral center in Warsaw, a 44 -year -old businessman named Karol Weber voted the mayor in mid -morning. Sitting in the sun in some steps of the Palace of Culture and Science, where a tail advanced light, explained: “[Trzaskowski] It represents the Poland that I want: modern, open to different people, to different lifestyles, although I have raised as a Catholic. ”Zbig, a 65 -year -old retired scientist who preferred not to give his last name, had also chosen the liberal applicant.“ I firmly believe that the government will accelerate changes in the country [con Trzaskowski]”, He said.
But even in the center of the capital, more liberal, the gigantic urn kept ballots for Nawrocki. Like Kamil’s, 41 -year -old businessman, who evoked his main reason with the help of a translator online: “I don’t want immigrants in Poland.” Zeszek, 55, voted only “as a minor evil”, because his first option was the ultra -right Slawomir Mentzen, who was third in the first round.
Poles presidents have an active role in foreign policy. Trzawski, 53, and vice president of Civic Platform, the center-right formation led by Tusk, is all the Europeanist that can be. During the electoral campaign, he insisted on his commitment to the EU, which he has demonstrated during his political career. “Poland must be a leader in the European Union, not a problem. We must return to the table where decisions are made, not limit us to complain from the outside,” he said in a presidential debate. Wojciech Przybylski, director of the Visegras Insight Analysis Center, believes that the triumph of the liberal candidate “would consolidate Europe, with two victories, in Romania and Poland.” But Trzawski would also be, says the analyst, “a great interlocutor with the White House.”
The administration of Republican Donald Trump has made it clear, however, that he would prefer a Nawocki victory. The Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, generated a deep discomfort this week among the liberals with statements that sounded to electoral interference. If Pis candidate wins, said Poles can count on Trump as a great ally. “There will continue to be American military presence here … and they will have American and high quality manufacturing teams,” he said, for the first time to be held in Poland.
In that ultra conclave, which was also held in Hungary, Nawocki had the express support of leaders such as Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister, or George Simion ,. For the populist international, these elections are so transcendental as for Europeanists. “If Nawrocki does not win in Poland, Hungary will be the following and Viktor Orbán will lose power,” Simion predicted. The candidate chosen by Pis says that he is “supporter” of the EU, “But from one that respects the sovereignty of nations and does not impose ideologies.”
The campaign of the ultra -nationalist candidate who configures him as a person with a murky, violent past, with alleged connections with organized crime and prostitution. To the vote of the exboxer did not seem to import them too much. Some consider that it is a campaign for defamation of the liberal media. Others see it as a value: “This will protect us better,” said a young man these days in Warsaw.
Nawrocki has adopted some Trumpism and Ultra International Current classics. First, the Poles, he says. In this prioritization in social, health and education services, not only a firm rejection of immigration. It also echoes a growing feeling in Polish society that questions public aid to Ukrainian refugees and even Trzawski has incorporated into his speech. But the Ultra candidate has gone a step further. In his attempt to win the votes of the extreme right -wing party Confederation (Konfederacja), which was third in the first round and, he promised to maintain the closed NATO door for kyiv.
With nuances, Nawrocki and – who turned right in the campaign, also in search of more conservative voters – they share their intention for strengthening the defense, in the NATO country that most spends in relation to GDP. They also oppose the immigration agreement and defend shielding borders.
In social matters, the differences between the two are more evident. Nawrocki defends traditional Christian and nationalist values. The Mayor of Warsaw represents the country’s opening towards European principles, with the defense of abortion, LGTBI rights, and the rule of law.
Yellow card to government
The ones, held on May 18, sounded all alarms in the liberal field, which in the last two weeks has turned to mobilize its disappointed electorate. The sum of the votes of the ultraconservatives and the extreme right beat mostly. The prime minister admitted that the government had received a yellow card and in a massive march in Warsaw last Sunday, he apologized. The executive he leads-with liberal matches that go from the center-left to the right-has barely turned about twenty of the 100 promises he made for the first 100 days in power.
As Przybylski says, the coalition has lacked “a positive project.” “What joined them was their anti-pis character,” he adds. The mayor of Warsaw has committed to work to fulfill the commitments that guarantee the change in Poland.
If the scrutiny finally gives the victory to the exboxer, no one doubts that he will block the action of the government, who with Andrzej doubt, Pis, as president, has not yet managed to carry out any law to restore the rule of law. Nawrocki, who directed the National Memory Institute, “would undergo the Executive permanently; he would use the presidential palace as a center of operations against Tusk,” says Przybylski.
It would also be a first step to PIS to try to recover the government in the next legislative, scheduled for 2027. The Kaczynski party would have arguments to delegitimize the Executive and press to hold early elections, a scenario that Tusk has rejected. To add a more uncertainty layer to this very adjusted duel, both fields have complained about electoral interference, and the threat or fear of challenge of electoral results plans on the environment.
