Polish conservative politician Karol Nawrocki, supported by the opposition right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, has won the second round of the 1 June presidential election, according to official counts by the country’s electoral commission.
Data from 100 per cent of the votes counted by the commission showed that Nawrocki won 50.89 per cent, while his opponent, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who is backed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform, won 49.11 per cent.
Voter turnout in the second round of voting was 71.63 per cent.
Opinion polls conducted on the eve of Sunday’s vote indicated an extremely small gap between the candidates, while exit polls released after the election ended on the evening of 1 June showed Trzaskowski leading by the narrowest of margins.
Trzaskowski has served as mayor of Warsaw since 2018 and has pro-European and liberal policies.
Nowrocki, director of the Polish National Memory Institute, was backed by the conservative Law and Justice party to which Andrzej Duda, who has been Poland’s president for two consecutive terms, belongs.
Karol Nawrocki, commenting earlier on Ukraine and future prospects in relations, said that “Poland’s strategic interest is to push the threat of a neo-imperialist, post-communist Russia as far away from Poles as possible. Peace in Ukraine must be lasting and just, not just a postponed war. And we must also not fall into URA-optimism about Ukraine’s case for the EU and NATO.”
Trzaskowski won 31.4 per cent of the vote in the first round of elections held on 18 May, beating Navrotsky by less than two percentage points.