Warsaw, Poland – Warsaw streets were flooded with red and white flags as two presidential hopefuls and their supporters marched through the capital last Sunday, June 1, and once before voting for the country’s next president.
RafałTrzaskowski, the central right civic platform of Civic Coalition and Karol Nawrocki, independent candidates supported by the Right-wing Law and Justice (PIS) party that ran Poland from 2015 to 2023, are the two candidates remaining in the election. In the first round of polls on May 18, Trzaskowski won 31.1% of the vote, while Nawrocki came in second with 29.5%.
So far, the voting group says that the votes are split quite evenly between the two for the final round. A poll by IBRIS for Polish News Outlet Onet shows that 47.7% of respondents are expected to vote for Trzaskowski, and 46% will vote for Nawrocki. I’m not sure about the rest.
One of the two will take over the successor of Andrzej Duda, a retired nationalist Conservative president, supported by PIS and accused of using his veto over the government of judicial reform.
This is a hotly contested race. Trzaskowski and Nawrocki clashed over the European Union, national security and social values. At the same time, both candidates employ a similarly hard-pressed approach to immigration and are based on an increase in responsiveness of Poles who are competing themselves for tense social services with 1.55 million Ukrainian migrants and war refugees, using anti-Frenia rhetoric.
Trzaskowski suggests that only working Ukrainians should have access to the interests of the country’s children, but Nawrocki is going further and says he is against joining Ukraine in NATO and the EU.
“All votes are required.”
Speaking last weekend during the “Patriot March,” which attracted around 140,000 supporters, Trzaskowski targeted his opponents, hoping for unity.
“It’s time to win honestly. It’s time for honesty to win. It’s time for justice to win. It’s time for truth to win. That’s the purpose of these elections,” he declared to the cheering crowd.
“We need to have full determination. All votes are needed. May the future win. All in Poland win.”
Trzaskowski has been the mayor of Warsaw since 2018. His comments on “integrity” are seen as reference to a recent news article about allegedly purchasing a flat in Gdansk, which belongs to an elderly man, in exchange for his promise to provide him with care. According to the man’s family, the promise was not met and he was placed in a state nursing home.
In response, Nowrocky said he would donate the apartment to a charity, noting that under the mayor of Truzaskovsky, the family had been kicked out of the Warsaw provincial accommodation.
Trzaskowski is considered a more liberal candidate than his opponent, and unlike Nawrocki, he supports the call for LGBTQ rights and the liberalization of the strict abortion laws of the past countries. However, he has been largely silent on these issues during his current campaign. If elected, he is more likely to help the Governance Union pass various bills. This primarily reforms the rule of law and the judicial system.
“RafałTrzaskowski will become a pro-European politician,” said Bartos Ridlinski, a political scientist at the Cardinal of the University of Stephen Witzinsky in Warsaw. “Brussels, Paris and Berlin will be the first capitals he will visit. He will try to maintain close ties with the US, but he has focused on strengthening European components both in the European Union and NATO.”
Nawrocki US approval
Now Rocky’s weekend “Polish march” through Central Warsaw attracted nearly 50,000 supporters and highlighted his views of nationalist conservatives, professional Catholics and free markets. He argues that Poland should prioritize relations with the US over the EU.
But his real victory came this week when he received official approval from President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Christie Noem.
Nawrocki made plans for Poland’s future on Tuesday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual event hosted by the American Conservative Coalition (US) for conservative activists and officials. The event usually takes place in the US, but was held in Hungary in 2022. This year it was held in the Polish town of Jazionka in the southeastern Poland.
“For us, for Poles, our relationship with the United States is based on a deep foundation of values. These values are freedom, democracy, sovereignty,” he told the audience.
“My opponent, Rafau Truzaskovsky, is playing cheated,” Nowrocky said. “He lies during public debate and gets caught up in these lies, and he doesn’t want to say what his real ideas for Poland after June 1, 2025. And this idea is clear.
The event was a much needed boost for Nawrocki after a long week of bad news.
First, Slau Mielmentzen, the flagship market head of flea market parties, who came in third in the first round of the presidential election on May 22, had no PIS candidate ever participated in the battle for the Football Hooligans in 2014.
Then, in the TV discussion the next day, he saw a small bag placed on his gums, which are thought to be filled with cigarettes, which prompted speculation that he might be taking drugs. Nawrocki responded on Tuesday by providing negative drug test results.
Finally, citing an anonymous source, Onet published a news article, citing an anonymous source, Nawrocki took part in supplying prostitutes to guests at Seasid City of Sopot’s Grand Hotel, Sholocki, who worked as a security guard in 2007, claiming Nawrocki denied the claim and in X’s post he said he would protect the appearance.
However, the negative news does not seem to affect his support.
“When it comes to hooligan fights, he was 28 at the time. I think men should know how to fight, so it’s no problem. When it comes to other issues, everyone can make mistakes and it doesn’t have to mean bad intentions.
“For me, voting for a conservative or right-wing candidate is a declaration of values, such as the Catholic faith. Voting for another candidate means voting for the church and I am totally opposed because of an abortion.”
Congress’s deadlock
Having a similar president is important for the governing citizen platform to reverse the controversial judicial reforms introduced by the former PIS government, particularly with regard to judicial independence.
As a result of changes deemed to be inconsistent with European law, the European Union imposed penalties on Poland in 2021. The civic platform came to power in 2023 on a promise to reverse the controversial law, but it could not do so as President Duda retains his veto and blocks attempts to change the law.
“Now Rocky’s victory would mean a complete war with the government,” Ridlinsky said. “He will become a much more conservative president than Andruzej Doda. He will probably introduce many bills to the Constitutional Court, which is under the control of judges elected by the law and the government of justice.”
According to experts, the victory of Now Rocky would also place Poland on the course of conflict with Europe.
“Karol Nawrocki will have a very strong choice of bilateral relations between Warsaw and Washington and will dissolve EU unity,” Ridlinsky said. “He is a Central European mini-trump, which means a major conflict with Germany, a cooling relationship with France, and certainly a conflict with Brussels.”
Nawrocki’s conservatism and his appeal to Trump have sparked concern among some Polish voters. Those who voted for left-wing or centralist candidates in the first round could oppose what they see as a Trump-like vision of Poland, rather than support for Truzaskowsky.
The left-wing and central candidates who lost in the first round have declared their support for Trzaskowski, and their supporters are expected to follow suit.
“It’s not easy for me to put a cross next to Trzaskowski,” said Zofia Szeremet, a 20-year-old Warsaw-based student who voted for Adrian Zandberg, the leader of the Razem Party’s leftist party in the first round. “But I can’t imagine not voting in such a critical election. I disagree with Trzaskowski about many issues, but at the end of the day he is a guarantee of a pro-European course in Poland.
“Nawrocki is anti-EU, anti-Uraine, inexperienced and incompetent, and I don’t think the president has anything to do with the hooligan movement.”
Close call
When it comes to election favourites, the polls are inconclusive. But what the first round of votes revealed is that voters are tired of the continued advantage of the two biggest political parties.
“If we combine the results of Nawrocki and Trzaskowski, it’s just over 60%, the worst since 2005. It’s clear that the Poles are looking for alternatives not only on the right, but also on the left,” which is compared to the close to 74% winnings won by the top two candidates Andrzej Duda and Rafal Trzaskowski in the 2020 presidential election.
“RafłTrzaskowski finished his first round [this year] Below, even what the vote predicts is the lowest he can win, and this seems to be the worst case scenario.
Plus, there may be more voters in the second round. The voter turnout in the first round was 67.3%. The parade added: “The second round is determined by the youth, but also by those who didn’t vote in the first round. That’s an open question they support.”
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