The liberal challenger Trzaskowski forces Duda into the runoff. The national conservative incumbent misses an absolute majority when electing a president in Poland.
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The Poles will have to vote on their new president in a runoff election in two weeks. National conservative incumbent Andrzej Duda missed the absolute majority required for reelection in the first round, according to forecasts. Duda received 41.8 percent of the vote, the opposition candidate and Mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski 30.4 percent. Trzaskowski had started for the liberal conservative coalition.
Voter turnout was very high despite the corona pandemic. According to the election commission, almost 48 percent of those entitled to vote cast their vote on Sunday afternoon. In the 2015 presidential election, total turnout at the end of the day was around 49 percent. The official final result should be announced no later than Wednesday morning.
The election was originally scheduled for May 10. However, it was temporarily postponed due to the corona pandemic after a violent political dispute. In April and May, PiS was still able to assume, according to opinion polls, that Duda would get more than 50 percent of the vote in the first ballot and secure a second term in office.
A kind of referendum on the politics of the PiS
Even if, according to forecasts, the result is now significantly worse, the PiS Duda supporters celebrated on election evening in Lowicz, west of Warsaw. Duda said it was important that the country be run as the majority of the population wanted. He congratulated his challenger Trzaskowski on his success.
Trzaskowski said to supporters in Warsaw that the result shows that a high percentage of Poles want to switch. “We still have a chance to win.” The second round of elections will decide whether Poland will get a president who will closely watch the government or someone who will not respect his own signature.
The election was also seen as a kind of referendum on the politics of the PiS, which has been the president since 2015 and has an absolute majority in parliament. A second term in Duda would underpin the party’s monopoly on power until the next parliamentary election in 2023.
The office of Polish President is not purely representative, the President has extensive powers and can not only veto laws, but also initiate his own legislative initiatives.
A possible victory for Trzaskowski in the second round could mean that the PiS must expect the president to exercise his veto right and stop the initiatives in almost all legislative proposals. Trzaskowski has already announced that he intends to reverse PiS’s controversial judicial reform.
Third-place candidate doesn’t want to vote for Duda
A deciding factor for the outcome of the run-off election could be who the voters of the applicants who have now left are deciding. Independent candidate Szymon Holownia, who finished third, said he would not vote for Duda himself, but did not want to dictate anything to his followers. He wanted to talk to Trzaskowski about whether he supported important points in his election program. Then the voters could make their own decision.
A spokesman for the candidate Krzysztof Bosak from the right-wing populist Konfederacja (7.4 percent) said that no election recommendation would be made. According to two opinion polls commissioned by the public broadcaster TVP and the private television station TVN Info, Duda would currently have a better chance of winning the runoff.
Special protection regulations applied in the polling stations on Sunday. In the center of Warsaw, people with face masks stood in line in front of the polling stations because only a limited number of people were allowed in the rooms. Disinfectants were ready at the entrance, the election workers wore gloves and transparent face shields. Voters were required to make their crosses with their own pen.
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