Nationalist candidate Karol Nawrocki wins knife-edge Poland presidential election

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Karol Nawrocki, a historian standing for the nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has won Poland’s presidential run-off vote in a heavy blow for Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government.

Nawrocki won 50.9 per cent of votes against 49.1 per cent for pro-EU candidate Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor representing Tusk’s Civic Platform party, the National Electoral Commission said on Monday.

Trzaskowski conceded defeat and congratulated Nawrocki. “I’m sorry that I didn’t manage to convince the majority of citizens of my vision of Poland,” he said on X in the late morning.

Nawrocki’s win could scupper Tusk’s reform agenda and weaken Poland’s role within the EU, as well as its staunch backing of Ukraine in the war against Russia.

The outcome is 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 victory marked a sharp turnaround for Nawrocki, who had consistently trailed Trzaskowski in opinion polls and narrowly lost the first round to his rival.

His win could be “a harbinger of Poland’s backsliding into domestic political turmoil”, said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Buras added that Tusk would now have to work with a president whose main mission will be “to pave the way for PiS’s return to power” and undermine his government.

Sunday’s result will “in effect significantly weaken the Polish prime minister’s international standing”, he said.

The Polish system gives the president relatively limited powers, but those include the right to veto legislation or refer bills to a constitutional court that is still packed with PiS-appointed judges.

Outgoing President Andrzej Duda, another PiS nominee, has wielded his veto powers to block Tusk’s planned judicial overhaul and other reforms since the prime minister’s coalition ousted PiS from office in 2023. Duda congratulated Nawrocki early on Monday on X.

Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is seeking re-election next year and has been Maga’s main European cheerleader, was the first country to congratulate Nawrocki.

The Polish vote was a “fresh victory for (European) patriots”, Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó said on Facebook.

The outcome was a late dramatic reversal of fortunes for the two candidates. A first exit poll had showed Trzaskowski with a wafer-thin lead, prompting Tusk’s candidate to declare early victory late on Sunday.

But Nawrocki refused to concede defeat and a later exit poll showed him instead in the lead.

Jarosław Kaczyński, the PiS founder and long-standing Tusk nemesis who handpicked Nawrocki as a little-known outsider, told supporters late on Sunday that the political newcomer had survived a “Niagara of lies” during the campaign.

Nawrocki denied all accusations against him, which related to personal scandals including alleged ties to criminals, calling them politically motivated.

The electoral commission said turnout in the second round was 71.6 per cent, almost 3 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.

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.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said she was “confident that the EU will continue its very good co-operation with Poland” following Nawrocki’s victory.

Congratulating him on his win, von der Leyen said: “We are all stronger together in our community of peace, democracy and values. So let us work to ensure the security and prosperity of our common home.”

Nawrocki pledged to thwart Kyiv’s bid to join Nato, which Tusk has denounced as an act of treason.

Tusk and Trzaskowski have both 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.

Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Brussels

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