WARSAW – Whatever the outcome, Poland’s cliffhanger presidential run-off Sunday may have just sounded the starting gun on the next campaign for prime minister.

At the Mała Warszawa theatre in the gritty Praga district of Warsaw, Karol Nawrocki – a political unknown mere months ago – emerged from election night convinced of victory.

Despite his scandal-ridden campaign, a late, updated exit poll handed the conservative candidate a wafer-thin lead over liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.

If confirmed by official results on Monday from the country’s electoral commission, it would mark a seismic jolt to Poland’s political landscape – and a looming headache for Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Warning for Tusk
Though both from the Civic Platform (KO) coalition, Tusk pointedly refrained from speaking at Trzaskowski’s election night event in a crammed hall of Warsaw’s National Museum of Ethnography.

Sunday’s vote was seen by many analysts as an informal referendum on Tusk’s centrist, pro-European government. Now, regardless of the winner, the thin margin will likely be spun by Tusk’s opponents as a rejection of his agenda.

Senior Law and Justice (PiS) lawmaker Przemysław Czarnek said his party would “begin very energetic work in order to give the Polish people another gift – the end of Tusk’s government”. Others in the party have echoed the same sentiment.

Meanwhile, a Nawrocki victory will make the already complicated task of governing the EU’s sixth-largest economy even more volatile.

The next parliamentary contest is not due until November 2027, but in Poland, the president has the power to veto the budget, which could trigger a snap election much sooner.

“A year and a half has passed since the [parliamentary] elections, and many reforms have not been implemented – not because the president vetoed them, but because there was no majority in parliament,” said Bartosz Rydliński of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.

The right regroups
For Law and Justice, the nationalist party ousted by Tusk in 2023 after eight years in power, Nawrocki’s win offers renewed hope of clawing back power.

One looming question now is the prospect of a new hard-right alliance.

Recent polls suggested that PiS and far-right presidential candidate Sławomir Mentzen’s Confederation party could command a parliamentary majority if they were to join forces.

A closer look at Sunday’s exit polls on voter behaviour showed that Nawrocki was projected to win over 90% of those respondents who voted for Mentzen in the first round.

For now, both parties insist such a partnership is off the table and Mentzen refused to endorse Nawrocki ahead of Sunday’s second round — not out of liberal sympathy, but for strategy.

As Radosław Markowski from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities put it, “Confederation benefits from a unified liberal front to oppose and a weakened PiS electorate to poach”.

Talking Trump’s language
For Europe, a Trzaskowski defeat would deal a blow to the EU’s hopes for closer, less complicated ties with Warsaw.

While Brussels may still work well with the Tusk government, Nawrocki could play spoiler at the European level. Nawrocki has voiced skepticism toward deeper EU integration, for instance, as well as the use of joint European debt instruments and the European Commission’s Green Deal agenda.

Nawrocki – who shared a selfie with US President Donald Trump and opposes Ukraine’s EU and NATO membership – had presented Sunday’s ballot as a referendum on Tusk’s pro-European course.

On Ukraine, Nawrocki has echoed Washington’s scepticism of Kyiv and in his campaign, repeatedly tapped into Polish anti-Ukrainian sentiment. That could further complicate European efforts to present a united front behind Ukraine in its war with Russia.

The newly elected president’s first test will come with the NATO Summit in The Hague in mid-June, where he will have to try to secure a conversation with Trump to demonstrate his international clout.

“It’s clear that Nawrocki’s and PiS’ communication channels with the White House and Capitol are open,” said political scientist Rydliński. “Republicans – who currently hold a majority – would certainly find it easier to talk to him.”