The Polish Newsroom reports on the final result, a very tight victory amid an historically high turnout
After exit polls released on Sunday evening gave the lead to the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, official results announced on Monday morning provided a narrow but clear majority to the nationalists’ camp’s candidate, Karol Nawrocki. He won the presidential election with 50.89% of the vote against Trzaskowski on 49.11%.
The two candidates made it to the run-off on 1 June after the first round, which took place two weeks earlier. Trzaskowski, representing the centrist bloc, secured 31.4% of the vote in the first round, with Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, on 29.5%. Two extreme right-wing candidates, Sławomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun, came in third and fourth places, respectively.
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Harbingers’ team of reporters from the 2 SLO high school in Warsaw have been covering the election campaign for the last few months, and on Sunday visited the headquarters of both candidates.
This year’s elections were especially exciting due to high attendance rates. Turnout in the second round was 71.63% – the first time in a presidential election in Poland that it has surpassed the 70% threshold.
Turnout was monitored closely because experts indicated that a lower attendance rate would be favourable for Nawrocki, while high attendance, above 70%, would increase the chances of Trzaskowski. In the end, this turned out not to be the case.
Harbingers’ spoke to voters in the centre of Warsaw, who gave their comments on this year’s high attendance rates. They agreed that the mobilisation of the population was due to the candidates being polar opposites, and the fact that they considered voting a moral duty.
“I feel that it is my duty – the duty of every citizen. I see it as a privilege, one that not everyone in the world is fortunate enough to have, so I make sure to use it. I simply cannot imagine not voting,” a voter told Harbingers’ Magazine.
When polling stations closed at 9pm on Sunday, an exit poll survey conducted by Ipsos for Polish broadcasters gave a marginal lead to Rafał Trzaskowski of 50.3%, against Nawrocki’s 49.7% – well within the polling margin of error. “We’ve won,” Trzaskowski announced at an event held in Warsaw.
But late exit polls, released around midnight, put Nawrocki in first place, with a predicted 50.7% of votes.
All votes were counted by Monday morning. The official announcement of the results, made by the Polish Electoral Commission at about 8am, stated that Karol Nawrocki was elected as the next president of Poland, having received 10,606,628 votes – 50.89% of valid ballots – against Trzaskowski’s 10,237,177 (49.11%).
Nawrocki, a historian with little experience in frontline politics – the most significant office he has held is that of chair of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance – will replace Andrzej Duda, who steps down after completing two five-year terms. The Polish constitution bars an individual from being elected more than twice.
The president is mainly a figurehead with little actual power, but he does have the ability to veto legislation passed in parliament. Nawrocki, like Duda, was supported by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, and therefore is predicted to continue Duda’s obstruction of centrist’s Donald Tusk government agenda and object to further integration within the European Union.
However, PiS has a good relationship with Donald Trump’s administration in Washington, and Nawrocki is predicted to play a role in attempts to convince the US president not to limit NATO-derived security commitments for Europe or further reduce military and political support for Ukraine.
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