Prof. Rafał Chwedoruk: Rafał Trzaskowski still has the greatest chance to win the presidential election

Sławomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun. Their support, counted both in absolute number of votes and percentage, makes them key in the context of the second round and provides some political capital for the future, especially in the case of the Konfederacja candidate. The result of the final showdown may depend to a large extent on the ability to mobilize and demobilize those who voted for these two.

There is no doubt that the support base of candidates supported by the parties of the ruling coalition will go to Rafał Trzaskowski . Also, most of Adrian Zandberg's voters will side with the candidate of the ruling coalition. On the other hand, the electorate of Konfederacja is still eclectic. Not as much as it was a few years ago. It has moved slightly to the right, among other things by winning over some of the former PiS supporters to its side. In the case of Grzegorz Braun, we are dealing with voices of protest around very specific issues, such as Polish-Ukrainian relations.

The question is whether he will have an interest in this. PiS will try to do everything to encourage Grzegorz Braun and his voters, but it will also have its hands tied to a certain extent. First, because of the complicated relations between Sławomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun, it will be difficult to seek support from both of them at once. Let us remember that Grzegorz Braun's radicalism, both in content and form, concerns several issues, and one of them may be in the background the relations of Poland with Israel. And this means that in the background the relations of the United States with Poland and Israel will be.

The current American administration is clearly on Tel Aviv's side. PiS will have to be very, very careful. However, it is in the interest of the ruling camp before the second round to create a space of anti-system for Braun's voters and for himself as a politician, so that he feels the possibility of an independent existence in politics and is symmetrically, equally against everything and everyone.

Especially since Grzegorz Braun is a huge beneficiary of PiS's policy towards Ukraine. A policy that was structurally no different from the policy pursued by the current government, so taking this path might not pay off for Braun. In fact, he would cease to distinguish himself, declaring anti-system, unable to mark a clear dividing line between the political establishment and his own functioning.

These are mostly voters from regions of Poland that are slightly more conservative than others. It can be expected that a significant portion of them had experience voting for Konfederacja. A slightly smaller, but still significant, vote for PiS.

It is worth noting that Grzegorz Braun very rarely speaks on socio-economic issues. Even in Konfederacja, he was not the trend that continued the legacy of Janusz Korwin-Mikke and presented a radically libertarian, somewhat Darwinist vision of social life. He largely proclaimed post-National Democrat theses related to cultural traditionalism, and also paid great attention to Polish-Ukrainian relations, and this long before the outbreak of the war. In this sense, the over 21% that fell on Mentzen and Braun are part of a broader European trend of fears of many European societies being drawn into an active war in Ukraine. PiS will face the challenge of how to break with its own policy in this matter, and the ruling camp will have to examine its conscience. What was the point of Donald Tusk's trip to Kiev just before the elections in the company of Macron and Starmer, who have terrible ratings in their countries and whose policies very clearly aim to directly engage the Polish army in Ukraine? It was one of the strangest events on Rafał Trzaskowski's side in this campaign, breaking up the tactic of avoiding entering topics that would not necessarily serve to demobilize voters of other candidates.

Every significant candidate in the elections, if he has only such organizational possibilities, organizes a political spectacle. After the first round, Mentzen tries to stay in the public debate as long as possible, so as to attract public attention in the context of the future of his formation. I have no doubt that the politicians of the Confederation, already experienced, will do the same. Mentzen's substantive scoring of both candidates will be his permanent political element for the next few days.

But with the percentage of votes that Konfederacja won, it will not have the opportunity to maneuver. While a little over half of this formation's voters consider themselves right-wing, the rest have a problem with that. They either do not consider themselves right-wing, or they do not identify with traditional divisions and are less interested in politics. Sławomir Mentzen will remain in the sphere of a certain understatement, only pointing out these programmatic issues.

We are talking about two parallel entities, the candidate and the political formation. I do not think the candidate would allow himself this type of support. Why would he endorse Karol Nawrocki after the second round? However, some politicians from Konfederacja, perhaps independently of the party authorities, or perhaps in a manner agreed with the authorities of the entire formation, will declare this and no other support. This is an absolute standard in politics. Konfederacja will have to consider whether it is in its interest for PiS to remain the hegemon on the right. And I have no doubt that opinions on this matter will be divided within this formation.

The division will continue, but in a proportion more favourable to the PiS candidate. In recent years, as the electoral geography perfectly shows, Konfederacja has continued to be supported relatively symmetrically in different parts of the country. However, in this symmetry, it has increasingly begun to lean towards regions with standard support for PiS. It has begun to reach the outskirts of the PiS electorate. This means that a larger percentage of this formation's voters, compared to 2020, will be willing to vote for Karol Nawrocki. But far from all. If the case of the studio apartment is to find some application in Polish politics, we can clearly see that it will not be in the first round, but perhaps as one of the many factors that would prevent people from voting for Karol Nawrocki in the second round.

Let's remember one thing, these voters, when it comes to Konfederacja, are still, above standard, often young voters who are just socializing politically or have recently undergone political baptism, participating in elections for the first time. And this is all fluid, just as it was with Korwin-Mikke.

Adrian Zandberg has always done very well in his constituency as a candidate in parliamentary elections. His electorate is largely made up of young people from large cities, an electorate that is structurally closer to the liberal camp in some respects.

He has already gone so far in trying to separate himself from the government, and also from the rest of the left, that it would be difficult for him to explain why he first separated himself and now would be approaching them, so he will try to remain in a kind of grey zone. And in this case, the question arises as to how much he would be able to influence the behavior of his voters. Let us remember that his result is a result slightly higher than most of the Razem party's ratings. Well, maybe similar to the most optimistic ones for this formation in recent months. However, these are also very young voters, slightly different from the young voters of Konfederacja, but generationally also just entering the world of big politics.

The word rebellion has become somewhat devalued. In Polish politics, there used to be nothing funnier than Paweł Kukiz, treated as a rebel, whose main idea was the same as PO's ideas, i.e. single-member constituencies. The left-wing electorate in Poland is, for many historical reasons, rather unrebellious, and in many respects rather static, even if there has been a generational change in it. However, these are mostly people who live in large cities, study at universities. The probability of any of them voting for a PiS candidate is close to zero.

Even though the first round was difficult for Rafał Trzaskowski, much more difficult than they could have expected, the mayor of Warsaw remains the favorite of these elections due to the fact that the electorate of left-wing candidates and Szymon Hołownia in a huge percentage comes from those social groups that more than usually appear at the polls. He has tried-and-tested channels of social mobilization, and can be sure of its effect.

However, there are many more question marks on the right, because these voters are very diverse and many of them live in places where voting is not as frequent as in large cities. Which does not mean, of course, that the first round did not reduce Rafał Trzaskowski's ratings as the favorite of the elections, without ultimately eliminating the status of the favorite