How Karol Nawrocki won the Polish presidential election

 

A large cheer went up outside Warsaw's presidential palace after 9pm last night as the first two exit polls in the country's presidential election were released.

Supporters of Rafal Trzaskowski, the capital's centrist mayor, thought that their candidate had won this closely-contested race.

The polls gave Mr Trzaskowski a thin lead of between 0.3 and 0.6% of a percentage point, which made me think they were being too optimistic at that early stage of the night.

Two hours later, an updated IPSOS poll was published.

The tables had turned, now placing conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki in the lead with a similar razor-thin majority.

Outside the presidential palace, I spoke to those who had gathered to watch the exit poll.

Among them was Karol, a 45-year old financial analyst from a small town in south-west Poland, who was visiting the capital with his wife and three children.

He spotted the RTÉ microphone and immediately said, "Hello Dublin" to me, before telling me that he and his wife had worked and lived in Tallaght between 2007 and 2009.

"It’s safer for Poland if Karol Nawrocki will win because all the power with one party is dangerous," said Karol.

Oliwer, a 22-year-old student from Warsaw told me that he voted for Mr Trzaskowski because he was the candidate who was "looking into the future and not into the past".

As the results came in thick and fast overnight from voting districts around Poland, it was clear that Mr Trzaskowski had won the capital and all other big cities.

More women had voted for him by a margin of 53% to 47%.

But Mr Nawrocki won a greater share of votes in small town and rural Poland, particularly in eastern Poland.

Crucially, he had managed to mobilise between 80-90% of far-right voters in his favour, according to exit poll data.

By 5.30am this morning, Poland's National Electoral Commission published the official result after the counting of all 21 million votes: Mr Nawrocki had won the election with 50.89% of votes.

Magnanimous in defeat, Mr Trzaskowski conceded late this morning and congratulated his rival.

"This victory is binding, especially in such difficult times. Especially with such a close result. Please remember that," he wrote on social media platform X.

About 360,000 votes separated the two candidates. It sounds like a lot, but not when you consider that 21 million votes were cast in Poland and at its embassies and consulates abroad.

Mr Nawrocki, who was backed by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, had no political experience before this grueling six-month long campaign.

Trailing Mr Trzaskowski by a margin of 12 points in January, he managed to keep closing the gap on his centrist opponent right up until the final days of campaigning, offering a socially conservative agenda and a nationalist promise to put Poland’s interests first.

He touted himself as an ordinary man who had grown up in a block of flats in Gdansk, which played well with the PiS voter base.

In one television debate in April, he childishly presented Mr Trzaskowski with a small rainbow flag, and placed it on his podium, in bid to undermine the centrist's appeal to conservative voters. Mr Trzaskowski has long championed the rights of Poland’s LGBTQ community.

The stunt helped Mr Nawrocki gain a few points.

The determining factor, however, was simply that more far-right voters backed the conservative candidate in yesterday’s second round.

During an appearance on the YouTube channel of far-right leader Slawomir Mentzen, Mr Nawrocki gleefully signed up to eight demands that Mr Mentzen had asked both candidates to sign so that his supporters could then decide who to vote for in the second round.

One of those demands included opposing Ukraine’s membership of NATO, something Mr Trzaskowski would not agree during his own appearance on Mr Mentzen’s channel. For far-right voters, some of whom harbour anti-Ukrainian sentiment, this was a deal-breaker.

A slight majority of young voters aged 18-29 and 30-39 also voted for Mr Nawrocki, possibly reflecting far-right voters, a third of whom are young male voters.

Mr Nawrocki’s brief visit to the Oval Office last month to meet US President Donald Trump also helped raise his stature among voters.

He told the Polish press afterwards that Mr Trump told him he would win the election.

Polish voters value national security above all else and many see the US as the country’s only viable security guarantor.

For Mr Trzaskowski, it was a case of history repeating itself - he lost the previous presidential election in 2020 by a slim margin too.

He will hardly try his luck a third time.

Mr Nawrocki’s campaign tried to drive home a message that Mr Traszkowski was out of touch with ordinary Poles, creating an impression that he was elitist and belonging to the 'establishment'.

In a speech last night before the official result was declared, the future president said his opponents had lied throughout the campaign. It was not very presidential in tone and signalled that the start of his presidency will be marked by confrontation with Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU government.

After 18 months of vetoes and delays to government-passed bills by outgoing president Andrzej Duda, the uneasy cohabitation between Mr Tusk's government and the president's office is set to continue, which could lead to political gridlock. Some experts have not even ruled out snap elections before 2027.

Mr Nawrocki’s election casts uncertainty over the future of the government’s reform agenda on the rule-of-law and its ability enact other progressive legislation such as the liberalisation of Poland's strict abortion laws.

The coalition parties overpromised the electorate when it was elected in late 2023 and could pay the price for not enacting such changes at the next election.

PiS, however, will revel in their victory, knowing that another socially conservative president will likely continue the blocking tactics of Mr Duda.

Having a conservative ally as president means PiS will now be in a much better position to build towards the next parliamentary elections in 2027 and return to power.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this morning that she is convinced "that the European Union will continue its very good cooperation with Poland".

But Mr Nawrocki owes his political feat to PiS and they will heap maximum pressure on the new president to oppose any moves by Mr Tusk’s government to overhaul the country’s constitutional court – stacked with conservative judges by PiS when it governed from 2015 to 2023.

A lack of progress by the current government on addressing PiS’s changes to the judiciary will not go down well with EU institutions.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to congratulate Mr Nawrocki on his election, posting on social media platform X that he counted on "further fruitful cooperation with Poland and the President personally".

But it is also a blow to Ukraine that the head of state of their closest western neighbour does not support their ambitions to join NATO.

Poland has chosen another conservative as its president.

It is a reminder that the country remains ideologically and evenly split between nationalist-conservatives and the far-right on one side, and a broad progressive bloc of centrists and left parties on the other.