Polish Presidential Election - First Round Has Swung Left, And Then Hard Right

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

On the 18th of May, the first round of the Polish Presidential election delivered anything but a conclusion to the continuing political gridlock in Poland. Despite much talk from the liberal civic candidates for President, that being Warsaw’s liberal Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and the lock-jawed veteran and Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, that whoever became the liberal candidate would be much more popular than any other candidate fielded by any other party, the result formed a brick wall which forced Trzaskowski’s parade bus to a hard stop. Despite taking first place, Trzaskowski fell far short of the required 50%, with 31.4% of the vote. The Law and Justice (PiS) party candidate, Karol Nawrocki, received 29.5% of the vote. To add insult to injury, in third and fourth place came the far-right Confederation candidate, Slawomir Mentzen with 15% and Grzegorz Braun, the man who put out a menorah with a gas extinguisher in December 2023, took 6%. The collection of just these results puts support for right-wing candidates over the 50% threshold, and in the run-off election those votes are likely to have formed behind Nawrocki. The electoral pendulum in Poland has swung left and then hard right. 

However, as both leading candidates incessantly argued, this first round meant one thing: everything was on the line on the 1st of June. As the smoke clears and Nawrocki emerges victorious, we might wish to consider in more detail what the hits and misses on each side were, and analyse the second round’s burgeoning turbulence. 

Despite the fact that the right was the most popular political force in the first round, the liberals and the left have something to celebrate. Since the General election of November 2023, the liberal establishment in Poland has unseated the Law & Justice Party which ruled Poland in Government and in the Presidential Palace between 2015 and 2023. In the first round of the Presidential election of 2020, saw incumbent President Andrzej Duda take 43.5% and Rafal Trzaskowski, who ran for the first time in 2020, took 30.5%. This corresponded with the result of the General election in 2019, where PiS won 43.6% with PO, the foremost liberal Party in Poland taking just 27.4%; two strong results for PiS. Today, that strength is gone as the liberal coalition has made a resurgence, and the right has split particularly to the Confederation, who at least in rhetoric, dislike PiS as much as they dislike the Liberal Coalition.

However, the 18th May saw a political rift from 2023 as the result was punishing for the third way candidate and Speaker of the Sejm, Szymon Holownia. In 2023, the success of the coalition between Holownia and Wladyslaw Kosniak-Kamysz’s PSL, was the kingmaker with 14.4% of the vote. Under 2 years later it is the Confederation that has emerged as the 3rd power in Poland whilst Holownia took just about 5%. Therefore the pendulum has swung right in this respect, as a considerable reservoir for support that would have given Trzaskowski confidence of victory has melted away. 

This is, of course, a victory for the right, and stems the tide of a liberal change in Poland that was forecast in 2023. Furthermore, the result of the 1st round did not indicate a decisive lead for Trzaskowski, and indeed as Nawrocki triumphantly declared, look more like a draw. This undercuts the arguments that nobody knew Nawrocki as a candidate, an argument that I made in a previous article on the Presidential race. It is quite clear, and acknowledged by Trzaskowski’s camp throughout, that June 1st was always going to be a neck-and-neck election wherein every vote counts. 

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

Something that the Nawrocki camp has not done particularly well in is campaigning in the run-up on the final stretch. Resembling the discussions conducted by Joe Rogan with JD Vance and President Trump in 2024, the Confederation candidate Slawomir Mentzen held discussions with both candidates. Although the content of those discussions was of interest and a worthwhile exercise in a tense political climate, it was the liberal side which won this opportunity in the end, as they invited Mentzen for a pint with Trzaskowski and the Foreign Minister Sikorski as a sign of unity. Furthermore, there has been no limit to the mocking of Nawrocki getting caught on camera taking snus or some similar substance during the head to head debate with Trzaskowski. Thus, in the run up to the 1st of June, it was Trzaskowski who appeared more put together before the final countdown to the second round. 

However, everything was still up in the air on the day and the rhetoric around the election remained intense and brutal. Nawrocki has emerged bruised but victorious. Trzaskowski would have pursued closer ties with Europe and finally allowed for liberal reforms blocked by the incumbent PiS President Andrzej Duda, whilst Nawrocki has made it clear that he will reject the Green New Deal, cosy up to the Trump administration and do everything in his power to stymie and block the progress of Donald Tusk’s coalition Government.