Tusk faces crunch two weeks to fend off Poland’s nationalists

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his allies have less than two weeks to convince voters to stick with their ruling coalition after a surge in support for nationalists in a presidential election.

In what’s turned into a referendum on the government’s 18 months in power, Tusk ally Rafal Trzaskowski will face Law & Justice opponent Karol Nawrocki in a runoff on 1 June. After Sunday’s first round, Trzaskowski led Nawrocki by less than two percentage points, a far narrower gap that polls had predicted.

Tusk’s victory in parliamentary elections in October 2023 was heralded by pro-European Union forces as a watershed moment that ended the previous eight years of populist rule. But the presidential vote exposed the scale of disappointment with Tusk’s failure to deliver on some key issues. While many of his efforts were blocked by the pro-opposition incumbent president, others were victim of internal squabbling within the coalition.

The result emerged as Romanian voters balked at electing a far-right president after months of political drama. The question now is whether Trzaskowski can get the numbers in Poland, with the lion’s share of the votes for the far-right candidates in third and fourth place expected to go to Nawrocki.

“These two weeks will decide the future of our homeland,” Tusk said, acknowledging the scale of the challenge in a post on X social media platform. “We’re not going back.”

Poland’s financial markets weakened following the results, with Warsaw’s WIG20 stock index recording its the steepest decline among primary equity gauges tracked by Bloomberg on Monday. The yield on benchmark government bonds jumped to the highest level in six weeks while the zloty was a touch lower against the euro.

While most of the political power in Poland is held by the government, the president’s sign-off is needed for key bits of legislation. Having an ally as head of state would help Tusk with his programme. The next parliamentary election isn’t expected until 2027.

Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor, secured 31.4% versus 29.5% for Nawrocki. The lead was 46% to 44% in an Opinia24 opinion poll before the second round of voting released on Sunday by TVN24 broadcaster, but 10% of voters remained undecided.

In the second round, Trzaskowski is counting on votes from other candidates fronted by parties in Tusk’s ruling coalition as well as centrist and left-leaning voters. He’s also dismissed Nawrocki as radical.

Speaking to supporters in Sandomierz, southeastern Poland, Trzaskowski pledged to “speed up changes” and promised to soften one of Europe’s strictest anti-abortion laws, build more homes and carry out judicial reform in an attempt to woo voters from the left and center.

But the numbers appear to favor the Law & Justice candidate. Nawrocki railed against Germany, called for more social spending on families and falsely accused the government of trying to introduce the euro. He briefly met with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office before the election, the only candidate to do so.

Nawrocki has reached out to the voters of far-right candidate Slawomir Mentzen, who’s run an effective social media campaign, coming third in the race. Together with Grzegorz Braun, another far-right candidate, their combined support stood at 21.1%. Both lashed out against the European Union and support the country’s strict abortion law.

The shift in support was as much for far-right candidates as it was the rejection of the two main parties that have dominated Polish politics for the past two decades, according to Marcin Duma from IBRiS pollster.

Nawrocki, a historian and former boxer who heads a state institute in charge of probing and documenting communist and Nazi-era crimes, has sought to present himself as a political novice and independent from the party that fielded him. As of Monday, he hadn’t received any endorsements.

Tusk, a former president of the European Council, returned to power amid a groundswell of support for his plan to end a standoff with the EU that led to the suspension of tens of billions of euros in aid from Brussels. Tusk has reopened the flow of these funds, helping revive Poland’s €710 billion economy just as US tariffs threaten to hit growth prospects across Europe.

The government increased the minimum wage, granting salary hikes for teachers, police officers and civil servants. It also increased pensions for widows and a monthly child allowance introduced by Law & Justice. But the measures fell short of making a substantial difference to the average Polish household, according to some pollsters.

There’s also disillusionment with key groups that backed Tusk at the ballot box last time. One is Poland’s women, who held mass protests against Tusk’s failure to decriminalize abortion. When Tusk moved to soften one of the most restrictive laws in the EU, a junior coalition partner blocked the move.

Tusk and Trzaskowski have pivoted on issues including migration and border security to help defuse worries exacerbated by Nawrocki and fellow populists. Their challenge now is how to counter the threat of Nawrocki, and the potential return of Law & Justice to government.

“Nawrocki’s victory would undermine Tusk’s political project and could be the harbinger,” said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. “In the medium term, disintegration of Tusk’s coalition could be one of the consequences.”

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