Five conclusions from Poland’s presidential election first round

According to official results from the first round of the presidential election, Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS), narrowly defeated Rafał Trzaskowski (31.36 percent), the candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party.

Sławomir Mentzen (14.81 percent) and Grzegorz Braun (6.34 percent), both far-right candidates, came in third and fourth place, respectively. Another centrist, Szymon Hołownia (4.99 percent), came in fifth, followed by left-leaning contenders Magdalena Biejat (4.23 percent) and Adrian Zandberg (4.86 percent).

Daniel Tilles, our chief editor, presents five takeaways from the first round results and speculates on their potential implications for the pivotal second-round runoff between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki on June 1.

Though he may lose the war, Trzaskowski wins the battle.

Trzaskowski will be unhappy with the outcome, which is an odd thing to say about the winner of the first round.

Compared to the polls, his lead over Nawrocki is much smaller. To make matters worse, he will have a much harder time figuring out how to win in the second round given the far right’s surge in votes and the poor showings of Hołownia and Biejat, the other candidates from the ruling coalition.

Naturally, the results of the first round do not necessarily indicate the outcome of the second; for example, some voters who cast ballots on Sunday might not show up at all on June 1st, and vice versa; it is difficult to forecast how support for certain candidates will divide in the second round.

But Trzaskowski now faces the difficult and conflicting task of trying to gain at least some votes from supporters of the far-right Mentzen while simultaneously trying to gain some support from the centrist and left-wing voters who supported Zandberg, Biejat, and Hołownia.

Even though Trzaskowski is still the favorite to win the second round, the race is probably going to be very close, according to opinion polls and bookmakers.

Novice Nawrocki keeps gaining ground.

Nawrocki, a political newcomer who had never before run for any elected office, developed into the campaign as he gained recognition and experience, as I wrote at the beginning of this month. The scandal involving Nawrocki’s second apartment and the elderly, disabled man who lives there hasn’t yet slowed that momentum.

But as I previously stated, Nawrocki was more likely to be impacted by the apartment scandal in the first round, when he could rely on PiS’s core supporters, than in the second round, when he would have to win over supporters from outside the party’s base.

However, Nawrocki has cause for optimism in the run-up to June 1. Unlike Trzaskowski, he has a much more defined goal: to increase turnout among PiS supporters and win over voters from other right-wing candidates. Nawrocki has positioned himself as a tough, hard-right candidate throughout the campaign, so that will essentially mean carrying on with his current tactics.

His biggest challenge is that, although Mentzen and his supporters share PiS’s social conservatism, their economic libertarianism is wholly incompatible with PiS’s advocacy of robust government involvement in the economy and generous social welfare.

In the 2020 election, voters who supported Krzysztof Bosak, the Confederation candidate, in the first round split nearly 50/50 between Trzaskowski and Duda, who were supported by the PiS. This time, Nawrocki must ensure that he performs significantly better than that.

On the far right, riding high.

The far right is a powerful political force in Poland, as demonstrated by Mentzen and Braun, who together received over 21% of the vote. Compared to their performance in the previous presidential election, in which Bosak won by less than 7%, that was a huge improvement.

The outcome this time is especially remarkable because Braun ran an openly antisemitic, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-LGBT campaign.

Initially viewed as a fringe candidate, Braun polled between 1-2 percent for the majority of the campaign, whereas Mentzen has continuously performed well in the polls. However, a string of antics in the final weeks before the election, along with the attention he received from the television debates, helped him achieve a strong outcome.

However, there are still many unanswered questions regarding the far right’s future. First, it must deal with the age-old issue of how to gain power. By itself, it is unlikely to ever secure a majority, but if it sided with one of the two major parties, PiS or PO, it would totally erode its anti-establishment stance.

Second, the far right is obviously tense: Mentzen was supposed to be their sole contender, but Braun challenged him and was consequently expelled from Confederation.

But that division might even be advantageous to Confederation, which has benefited from the removal of the highly radical and contentious Braun while still having the chance to collaborate with him and his group in the future.

left that is divided.

The left as a whole performed well in this election, especially when compared to recent years when it has frequently been in the political wilderness. The combined percentage of Zandberg and Biejat’s votes was over 9%, which rises to over 10% when veteran left-winger Joanna Senyszyn’s 11% share is taken into account.

That was significantly better than the outcomes of the left-wing candidates in the previous two presidential elections, where Magdalena Ogórek received 2 points 4 percent in 2015 and Robert Biedroń received 2 points 2 percent in 2020.

However, the fact that the two candidates received about equal numbers of left-wing votes this time around demonstrates the issue with unity on the left. The “purist” wing, which Zandberg represents, is committed to openly expressing left-wing opinions regardless of the political situation or repercussions. Biejat belongs to the “realist” school of thought, which holds that working with centrist parties and reaching a compromise is preferable to achieving none of their objectives at all.

It’s telling that both candidates received less than 5% of the vote at the end of this election. If their parties, Together (Razem) and The Left (Lewica), received that kind of result in parliamentary elections, they would both be unable to enter parliament. That is exactly what occurred in 2015, when there were no left-wing Members of Parliament.

A warning to the ruling coalition and a disappointment for Hołownia.

They hoped it would serve as a launching pad for Hołownia’s presidential aspirations when he and his centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) party decided to join the coalition government in 2023, and he himself assumed the prominent position of speaker of parliament.

Actually, it appears to have hurt him. While Hołownia did well in the 2020 presidential election as an independent and newcomer, he was obviously running as an establishment figure and a member of a government that polls show is not very popular this time around, despite his best efforts to deny it.

His and Biejat’s results serve as a warning to the ruling party as well as to any smaller party that joins a coalition government. Since they have controlled Polish politics for 20 years, PO and PiS have a tendency to engulf their smaller allies: in the case of PO, this is Modern (Nowoczesna), and in the case of PiS, it is Sovereign Poland (Suwerenna Polish).

Expect the Polish People’s Party (PSL), the last member of the ruling camp, Poland 2050, and the Left to become more assertive as they try to avoid political oblivion with just over two years until the next parliamentary elections. As a result, it will be challenging for PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk to rally his coalition on contentious issues.

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