The Poles did not elect a president in the first round. Both advancing candidates are accompanied by problems with realities.
The first round of the presidential elections in Poland went without surprises at the finish line. As expected, the election favorite, Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowsi, won the first round, but did not reach 50% of the vote, which would have allowed him to take office in the presidency. Poles therefore await a second round of voting, where Trzaskowski will face off against Karol Nawrocki, who finished just narrowly in second place. Both are involved in scandals related to real estate in Poland.
The long-term mayor of the capital, who twice succeeded in being directly elected to this position, easily received just over 31% of the vote. Trzaskowski is a member of the Civic Platform of the incumbent Prime Minister Donald Tusk. He led public opinion polls for a long term and confirmed his role as favorite in the fierce voting.
As expected, the candidate from the opposition party Law and Justice, historian Karol Nawrocki, came in second place. He officially ran as an independent candidate, but his connection and support from the largest opposition group in Poland is clear. Nawrocki achieved 29% of the vote and stayed just behind the favorite.
Czech Poles stood behind Trzaskowski and the left-wing candidate
The close result does not bring a clear favorite for the second round of elections. Hundreds of thousands of Poles also took part in the elections from abroad, where a large part of the Polish population lives. The Czech Republic was no exception, with a strong Polish minority in the Moravian-Silesian border region with Poland.
"The Poles who voted in the Czech Republic clearly chose the center-right liberal Trzaskowski in the first round of the presidential election. Representatives of the Polish left also scored among them, while conservatives fell short,"
The CT correspondent in Poland, Andrea Papadopulos, noticed on X.
In second place in the "Czech" vote was the left-wing politician Adrian Zandberg. Although he only received a total of 4.8% of the votes, he placed second among the youngest voters with almost 19%.
"If the first round estimates are confirmed, it's a cold shower especially for the Polish Prime Minister. "The game of everything begins," writes Tusk. It's a thrashing for the entire coalition, whose candidates according to the exit poll only received 40 percent of the votes,"
Reporter and analyst Filip Herzer evaluates the overall results on X.
He adds a comment from Donald Tusk, for whom the "game for everything" begins. Although the current Polish Prime Minister managed to form a government despite the PiS party, the long-time hegemon of Polish politics, the position of the president remains held by this party's representative, Andrzej Duda, who is strongly boycotting many political efforts of the current government, Tusk's support also decreases due to failure to keep his promises.
Real estate problems of advancing presidential candidates
The Polish president has the right to veto, which is only overruled by a three-fifths majority in the Sejm (unlike a majority in the Czech Chamber of Deputies), and Tusk does not have this majority. If Trzaskowski managed to win, the situation would be unblocked.
At the same time, both presidential candidates must face several scandals. For Nawrocki, the question of his purchase of a small apartment in Poland from senior Jerzy has recently become the biggest issue by dubious practice of the so-called "grandson method". He promised the senior care and the possibility of spending his life in the apartment for bequeathing it, but he did not care about it and Polish journalists found him in a nursing home and also pointed out his FB posts where he complains of not having food.
Nawrocki himself described himself in debates as an ordinary Pole, who has one in which he lives. He then clumsily refuted the lie. Questions of reality do not even avoid the mayor of Warsaw. The capital is experiencing an unprecedented construction boom during his tenure, but even that is accompanied by controversies.
The Polish real estate market is very liberal and development projects are quickly implemented here. In the capital, however, their price is also growing rapidly and some new buildings are criticized for poor execution, which is allowed by local free legislation. This then falls Trzaskowski's burden.
Sources: author's text, onet.pl, seznamzpravy.cz, X.com
