Last 6 August, conservative Karol Nawrocki takes the oath of office as president of Poland. He has defeated formidable opponents – not only his rival, the center-left Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, but also the major power brokers at home and abroad who backed him.
After winning the vote count on 2 June, President Nawrocki experienced formal challenges by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his former Justice Minister Adam Bodnar that lasted for a month, followed by another four weeks of public questioning of the outcome.
The government alleged electoral irregularities and questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Court judicial chamber that certified his victory. All of this came even after European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, United States President Donald Trump and others quickly congratulated President Nawrocki as the winner.
The Polish Supreme Court thoroughly examined and dismissed these objections, pointing out on 1 July that the government had not challenged the legitimacy of the same chamber’s confirmation of the 2023 parliamentary elections that certified the Tusk government and elected Bodnar to the Senate, nor the 2024 Warsaw and European Parliament elections. It further argued that the approximately 20 cases of discrepancies uncovered during recounts would not have changed the outcome of the election.
The final result thus remained virtually the same as announced on 2 June, with 42 year-old President Nawrocki, an independent backed by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) Party, obtaining some 50.9 percent of the vote, and 53 year-old Trzaskowski, backed by the center-left coalition led by Civic Platform (PO) – Poland’s main ruling party – at 49.1 percent, losing by a margin of 1.7 percent, or less than 370,000 votes, the smallest in post-1989 history. Recounts showed that some 18,000 votes shifted to Trzaskowski, far too few to have affected the outcome.
President Nawrocki’s victory dealt a huge blow to the Tusk government, which very much needed the presidency to deliver on many as-yet largely unfulfilled 2023 campaign promises, boost its sagging ratings and set itself up to win the next parliamentary election, scheduled for fall 2027.