Right-wing populists hopeful after first round of Polish presidential election

WARSAW, Poland — There's a long way to go yet in Poland's presidential election but Sunday's first round was a good day for candidates on the political right and far right, and it flashed a big red warning signal for the moderate government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Tusk's candidate, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, and a conservative opponent backed by the Law and Justice party, Karol Nawrocki, emerged ahead in a pack of 13 candidates.

They were extremely close. Trzaskowski got 31.36% of the votes and Nawrocki — who was endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump — won a better-than-expected 29.54%, according to final results released Monday morning.

Poles now head to a nail-biting second round on June 1, with much resting on the outcome of the runoff.

Sunday's election came on the same day that Romania's centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, won the presidency in a country that, like Poland, is located along the eastern flank of NATO and the EU, where Russia has waged a three-year war in Ukraine. Dan managed to overcome a threat from a hard-right anti-Ukrainian nationalist, offering relief to those in Europe worried about a stance viewed as helpful to Moscow.

''The campaign in the next two weeks will be very polarizing and brutal — a confrontation of two visions of Poland: pro-EU, liberal and progressive versus nationalist, Trumpist and conservative,'' said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The race is not only for the presidency, an office with the power to influence foreign policy and veto laws. It will also seal the fate of Tusk's efforts to repair the country's relationship with European allies after years of rule by conservatives from Law and Justice, which was often in conflict with Brussels.

Tusk has been trying to reverse changes to the judicial branch that were considered undemocratic by the EU, but his efforts have been hampered by outgoing conservative President Andrzej Duda.

Many centrist and progressive voters are disappointed that Tusk has not delivered on other promises, like liberalizing the restrictive abortion law. He has also been criticized for the heavy-handed way he took over control of public media from Law and Justice, and the continued politicization of taxpayer-funded public media.

2 candidates hit the streets ahead of a runoff

Trzaskowski and Nawrocki wasted no time at all as they head toward the finish line. They got out on the streets early Monday to meet with voters. Trzaskowski handed out sweet yeast buns on the streets of Kielce, and Nawrocki distributed donuts and posed for selfies with supporters in Gdansk.

Trzaskowski, who ran and barely lost to Duda in 2020, was long considered this year's front-runner. After Sunday's vote he can't be sure.

Nawrocki declared himself ''full of energy and enthusiasm on the way to victory" in a statement to the media, adding that ''probably all of Poland saw that Rafał Trzaskowski is a candidate who can't cope.''

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski vowed to fight until the end. ''I will try to convince young people and all those who voted differently that it is worth voting for a normal Poland, not a radical Poland,'' Trzaskowski told reporters in Karzysko-Kamienna.

The two men's political fates rest to a large extent with voters who chose other candidates in the first round, and how they will vote can be difficult to predict. Experts say there isn't an automatic transfer of votes from certain candidates to others; some who don't get their chosen candidate might not vote at all.

The rise of the far right

Still, Trzaskowski has a lot to worry about.

More than 20% of voters opted for candidates on the far right, whose conservative and nationalistic worldviews align much more closely with Nawrocki's.

Sławomir Mentzen of the hard-right Confederation party won 14.8%, while Grzegorz Braun, still further to the right, won over 6%. Both have embraced antisemitic and anti-Ukrainian stances. Braun used a fire extinguisher to put out candles on a menorah that were lit for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah in the Polish parliament in 2023.

Candidates from parties in Tusk's coalition government, which includes left-wing, centrist and center-right parties, together won about 40%.

''Right-wing and far-right candidates gathered as many as 54% of votes — this is the most surprising result of the first round of the presidential election,'' Buras said. ''This brings Nawrocki into a favorable position ahead of the run-off on June 1. He will have a larger pool of votes to draw upon.''