Exit poll shows Poland’s pivotal presidential election too close to call

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as further information becomes available.

As voting closed in Poland’s pivotal presidential election, the exit poll suggests that the final result – expected to be confirmed on Monday – is too close to call. It also indicates that turnout today, at almost 73%, was an all-time record for a presidential election in Poland.

According to the poll, conducted by Ipsos, Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party, took 50.3% of the vote. That put him fractionally ahead of Karol Nawrocki, who is supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS), on 49.7%.

A separate exit poll by the OGB agency for conservative broadcaster Republika showed the two even closer, with Trzaskowski on 50.2% and Nawrocki on 49.8%.

Whoever is confirmed as the winner will have a huge say in how Poland is governed during their five-year term. Trzaskowski is closely aligned with Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, and would work closely with it, whereas Nawrocki is likely to wield the presidential veto to stymie the government’s agenda.

Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also favour closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.

Meanwhile, if Ipsos’s estimate of voter turnout, 72.8, is correct, then today’s election will have beaten the record for a Polish presidential election, 68.23%, set in 1995, when Lech Wałęsa was narrowly defeated by Aleksander Kwaśniewski.

It would also be the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, with only the 2023 parliamentary election that brought Tusk’s coalition to power recording a higher figure of 74.38%

The Ipsos exit poll, which was today conducted at almost 1,000 randomly selected polling stations, has in previous elections closely matched the final count. But it does have a margin of error.

In the first round of the current election two weeks ago, Ipsos’s exit poll very accurately predicted the final results for both Trzaskowski and Nawrocki. As the two most popular among the 13 candidates – but with neither winning over 50% of the vote – they proceeded to today’s second-round run-off.

All eyes will now be on the official count, with results rolling in overnight. The head of the National Electoral Commission (PKW), Sylwester Marciniak, said on Friday that they hope to publish final, official results on Monday morning or early afternoon.

The results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s ruling coalition.

An attempt to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by the current president, Andrzej Duda, who is a PiS ally. His second and final term in office ends in August.

If either Trzaskowski or Nawrocki decides to challenge today’s result due to any alleged transgressions in vote counting or other aspects of the electoral process, such claims would be considered by the same, contested chamber of the court.

Whatever the final result, the fact that it is so close represents a remarkable performance for Nawrocki, a political novice who has never previously stood for public office. He currently serves as head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state historical body.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, is a seasoned political operator who finished a close second to Duda in the 2020 presidential election and currently serves as mayor of Poland’s capital, Warsaw. He is also deputy leader of Tusk’s PO party.

Today’s vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront, and has also seen both candidates – but in particular Nawrocki – hit by scandals and controversy.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he becomes president, he will seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.

Main image credit: Agnieszka Sadowska/ Agencja Wyborcza.pl