Click on the player icon above for an audio report by Marcin Matuszewski.
Poles went to the ballot box on Sunday in the country’s eighth presidential election since the fall of communism in 1989.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. as voters chose from among 13 candidates, several of whom were backed by the country’s largest political parties.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist, pro-EU coalition—victorious in the October 2023 parliamentary elections after eight years of right-wing rule—aims to consolidate its hold on power by gaining control of the presidency.
With 100 percent of the ballots counted, Trzaskowski, a prominent politician from the ruling Civic Coalition (KO), won the first round of Poland's presidential contest after garnering 31.36 percent of the vote, electoral officials said on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, Nawrocki, a historian supported by the opposition right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, was runner-up with 29.54 percent, according to the National Electoral Commission (PKW).
Far-right candidate Sławomir Mentzen of the Confederation party finished third with 14.81 percent.
Another far-right politician, Grzegorz Braun, came in fourth with 6.34 percent, ahead of lower-house Speaker Szymon Hołownia, co-founder of the centre-right Third Way alliance, who secured 4.99 percent, according to the official election results.
Adrian Zandberg from the left-wing opposition Together party finished the race sixth with 4.86 percent, followed by leftist senator Magdalena Biejat of the co-governing New Left group, who garnered 4.23 percent, the election returns also showed.
The six other candidates—left-wing veteran Joanna Senyszyn; celebrity journalist Krzysztof Stanowski; right-wing Republican Marek Jakubiak; economist Artur Bartoszewicz; pro-Russian figure Maciej Maciak; and lawyer Marek Woch—shared the remainder of the vote.
Turnout was a record 67.31 percent, Sylwester Marciniak, head of the National Electoral Commission, told reporters.
Trzaskowski and Nawrocki will now battle it out in a second round of voting on June 1.
More than half a million Poles living abroad registered to vote in the presidential election by absentee ballot, according to officials.
The conservative outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, first elected in 2015, was constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. His second term ends on August 6.
Runoff set for June 1
Under Polish election law, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, a runoff is held two weeks later.
The winning candidate will serve a five-year term as head of state, overseeing foreign and defence policy and holding veto power over legislation.
Trzaskowski, a political scientist specialising in European studies, has served as mayor of Warsaw since October 2018 and was re-elected last year.
He was a member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2013, Poland’s administration and digitisation minister from 2013 to 2014, and deputy foreign minister from 2014 to 2015.
He previously ran for president in 2020, losing to Duda.
His runoff rival, Nawrocki, heads the Institute of National Remembrance, a state-run agency tasked with documenting and prosecuting Nazi and Soviet crimes against Polish citizens.
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Source: Polish Radio, IAR, PAP