Polls have opened inPolandfor the second round of the presidential election, with the two candidates offering radically different visions for the country locked in a dead heat.
The race pits thepro-European Warsaw mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, backed by Donald Tusk’s politically-diverse governing coalition, against the historian and former amateur boxer Karol Nawrocki, endorsed by the populist-right Law and Justice (PiS) party that governed the country between 2015 and 2023.
While the role of the Polish president is largely ceremonial, it carries some influence over foreign and defence policy and a critical power to veto new legislation. This can only be overturned with a majority of three-fifths in parliament, which the current government does not have.
At stake is whether Tusk’s government will be able to make progress on its electoral promises on the rule of law and social issues, including abortion and LGBTQ rights, after 18 months of difficult cohabitation with the opposition president, Andrzej Duda.
A Nawrocki win would prolong the current deadlock, making it difficult for the government to pass any major reforms before the 2027 parliamentary election.
“Tusk knows the stakes and that if Nawrocki wins, he’s got a lame-duck administration for the next couple of years. And it will be worse than with Duda as Nawrocki will come in fresh, with a new mandate from what effectively turned into a referendum on the government,” Prof Aleks Szczerbiak, who teaches east and central European politics at the University of Sussex, said.
In the final days of the campaign, both candidates soughtto court voters of candidates knocked out in the first roundand mobilise their supporters, with analysts stressing that less than 200,000 votes could decide the outcome of the race.
Polls showed the difference between the two candidates to be within the margin of error, making it the closest election in Poland’s post-1989 history.
“The outcome is impossible to predict – there are too many moving parts, and even the slightest change on the day could tip the balance,” Ben Stanley, an associate professor at SWPS University in Warsaw, said.
On Friday night, the country went into electoral silence, which forbids further campaigning and new polls. This left voters with little more than 24 hours to reflect on a brutal and polarising campaign.
Trzaskowski, the Oxford-educated Warsaw mayor since 2018 who previously held ministerial posts and served in the European parliament, sought to project himself as a safe pair of hands to work with the government on implementing progressive reforms.
However, his campaign faced difficulties because of close links to the unpopular Tusk government. He also had to defend himself against suggestions he is out-of-touch and elitist, and against allegations about foreign funding for online advertising promoting his candidacy.
In turn, Nawrocki is new to politics. Since 2021, he has led the Institute of National Remembrance, a state research institute with public prosecution powers investigating historical crimes against Poland.
Formally an independent but endorsed by PiS, he offers a new face to the party which is burdened by the polarising legacy of its eight years in power. He received public support from the US president,Donald Trump, and members of his administration, as well as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
But his campaign was beset with allegations of impropriety related to his past, including questions over his acquisition of an apartment from an older man and his admission that he took part in an organised fight between 140 football hooligans in his youth.
A win for Nawrocki could alsoalter Poland’s supportive position toward Ukraine. He repeatedly spoke about the difficult history between the two nations and declared his opposition to Ukrainian membership in Nato.
The polls will close at 9pm local time (8pm BST), with exit polls to follow. However, the race is expected to be too close to call, with the focus shifting to late polls and official results dripping in overnight.