Nationalist candidate takes wafer-thin lead in Polish election, final exit poll says

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Karol Nawrocki, a historian standing for the nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, was inching towards victory in Poland’s presidential run-off vote on Sunday after a final exit poll gave him a razor-thin lead over his centre-right opponent.

A late Ipsos exit poll showed Nawrocki winning 50.7 per cent of votes against 49.3 per cent for pro-EU candidate Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor representing Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party. The poll came after an earlier exit poll showed Trzaskowski had a wafer-thin lead.

A Nawrocki win, if confirmed by final results, could scuttle Tusk’s reform agenda and weaken Poland’s role within the EU and as staunch backer of Ukraine in its war against Russia. Outgoing President Andrzej Duda, another PiS nominee, has wielded his veto powers to block Tusk’s planned judicial overhaul and other reforms since Tusk’s coalition ousted PiS from office in 2023.

It would also be a rare win for Donald Trump’s Maga movement abroad, following election defeats for rightwing politicians aligned with the US president in Canada, Australia and Romania. On a visit to Poland last Tuesday, US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem urged voters to “elect the right leader”, describing Trzaskowski as “an absolute train wreck”.

The late exit poll appeared to point towards a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the two candidates.

After a first exit poll gave Tusk’s candidate a lead of just over half a percentage point, Trzaskowski declared an early victory in an “incredibly close” run-off. He promised to be “the president of all Poles” and work to mend the deep faultlines in Polish society highlighted by the election.

But far from conceding defeat, Nawrocki told his supporters that the difference in the first exit poll was “so minimal” that Poland would start Monday with him as president.

“We have to win tonight and we know that we will,” he added.

Nawrocki said on Sunday night that he had campaigned in unfavourable circumstances including PiS funding cuts, while Duda and other senior PiS politicians had warned that Tusk could manipulate the presidential vote.

Jarosław Kaczyński — the PiS founder and long-standing Tusk nemesis who handpicked Nawrocki as a little-known PiS outsider — also forecast late on Sunday that his candidate would win. Kaczyński told supporters that Nawrocki had survived a “Niagara of lies” during a campaign when Nawrocki, a political newcomer, brushed off several personal scandals, including alleged ties to criminals. He denied all accusations as politically motivated.

“The narrower the margin in the final results, the more probable the scenario of a contested result,” said Adam Gendźwiłł, political science professor at Warsaw university.

Turnout was estimated by Ipsos at 72.8 per cent, which would be the highest for a presidential election but 2 percentage points short of the record participation in the 2023 parliamentary elections that brought Tusk back to power and ended eight years of PiS rule.

The Ipsos poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. The electoral commission says it hopes final results will be announced on Monday morning or early afternoon.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, Tusk had warned voters that Nawrocki could not only block reforms but also undermine Poland’s role in the EU amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. Nawrocki pledged to thwart Kyiv’s bid to join Nato, which Tusk has denounced as an act of treason.

Still, Tusk and Trzaskowski have said that they would not allow Polish troops into Ukraine as part of an international peacekeeping mission should Kyiv and Moscow agree to a truce.