Karol Nawrocki won the second and decisive round of Poland’s presidential election, official results showed Monday morning. The right-wing nationalist candidate narrowly beat his pro-European challenger, Rafał Trzaskowski.
Nawrocki received 50.89 per cent of the vote, while Trzaskowski received 49.11 per cent. The difference amounted to nearly 370,000 votes, according to results posted on the Polish Election Commission’s website. The 71.6 percent turnout rate was a record high.
On Sunday night, Trzaskowski was in the lead by a narrow margin of 0.7 percentage points. Around 1.00 Monday morning, a late exit poll from the polling firm Ipsos showed that the results had tilted in Nawrocki’s favor.
PiS support
Trzaskowski won in Warsaw, his home city, as well as in other major cities, including Krakow, Wrocław, Poznań, and Gdańsk. Meanwhile, Nawrocki easily won eastern Poland and received 71.4 percent of the vote in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, which borders Ukraine.
The 42-year-old Nawrocki ran as an independent but enjoys the support of the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party. A historian, Nawrocki succeeds outgoing PiS president Andrzej Duda.
Presidential veto
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk had hoped to secure the presidency for his Civic Coalition with Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw. Tusk’s coalition is expected to struggle to implement planned reforms in the coming years.
In Poland’s semi-presidential system, the president has a legislative veto, which Duda has used several times in recent years to block democratic government reforms. The Polish president serves a five-year term.
