By Maria Wilczek
As early numbers came in on Sunday, the mood at Rafał Trzaskowski’s election night event was jubilant. Crowds chanted “Rafał, Rafał” as he squeezed through an undulating corridor of people holding out flashing smartphone cameras and attempting fist-bumps, heading towards his branded campaign van.
“We are already setting out through Poland tonight,” Borys Budka, who is leader of the centrist opposition party Civic Platform (PO) from which Trzaskowski hails, told me in the crowd.
“Almost 60% of Poles have spoken out in favour of changing the president, which is a good sign for us ahead of the second round,” said Budka, referring to the results of the exit poll, in which incumbent conservative president Andrzej Duda received 42%, ahead of Trzaskowski on 30%.
At the same time, Duda, who is supported by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, was making an equally triumphant speech. From the stage at his event, he exclaimed “the margin is huge”, before also setting out on a night-time journey to the next stop on his campaign trail.
Yet polling has shown that the second-round run-off between the two candidates on 12 July will be much closer – neck-and-neck, in fact. Much will depend on horsetrading that takes place over the next two weeks, as Duda and Trzaskowski seek endorsements from their defeated rivals and votes from their supporters.
The runoff maths
According to Tuesday’s final results published by the National Electoral Commission (PKW), 19.5 million Poles voted, a turnout of 64.5%. Of those, over 8.5 million (43.5%) cast their votes for Duda while 5.9 million (30.5%) picked Trzaskowski.
The two rivals will now be fighting over the remaining 5.1 million voters – as well as encouraging turnout among the over 10 million who chose not to vote in the first round.
Among those who voted for other candidates, over half, 2.7 million, opted for centre-right independent candidate Szymon Hołownia, who came in third with 13.9% of the vote. His supporters are most likely to switch their allegiance to Trzaskowski.
According to two recent polls by IBRiS and Pollster, 74% of Hołownia voters will support Trzaskowski in the second round, whereas only 7% or 17% would switch to Duda. Hołownia himself has declared that he “is sure” he would “not vote for Andrzej Duda”.
Andrzej Duda może liczyć tylko na siebie. Wyborcy opozycyjni w drugiej turze za nim nie pójdą [WYKRES DNIA] https://t.co/qMB7BC47Hj
— Gazeta.pl (@gazetapl_news) June 23, 2020
However, on Monday, Hołownia announced that, before endorsing Trzaskowski, he will present him with a list of three or four priorities from the leaders of his movement. “We will say: is this acceptable for you? If so, then this statement will help many of us make up our mind [in the second round].”
The next largest group of voters, the 1.3 million (6.8%) who supported far-right candidate Krzysztof Bosak, is likely to be more divided. While Pollster found 49% of them voting for Duda in the second round and 19% for Trzaskowski, IBRiS had 43% for Trzaskowski and 23% for Duda.
The uncertainty comes in part from Bosak’s mix of social ultra-conservatism – which puts him closer to Duda on issues like opposing “LGBT ideology” – and free-market economics – which puts him at odds with Duda’s more statist approach.
Many in Bosak’s Confederation (Konfederacja) party regard PiS and PO as equal evils, and therefore would be happy to see the gridlock of a President Trzaskowski vetoing bills passed by a PiS parliament. Before the election, one of Bosak’s campaign team expressed precisely this view, though emphasising that this was just a personal opinion.
Confederation and Bosak himself have said they will refuse to endorse anyone in the second round. “I leave the choice to the conscience and minds of our voters,” said Bosak, adding that they face an unenviable “choice between a declared enemy and a false friend”.
According to the polls, around two thirds of the 0.5 million voters (2.4%) who turned out for Władysław Kosiniak Kamysz, leader of the agrarian Polish People’s Party, are likely to vote for Trzaskowski, with less than one fifth favouring Duda.
Almost all of the 0.4 million (2.2%) who voted for left-wing candidate Robert Biedroń are likely to vote for Trzaskowski, find the polls. Biedroń yesterday expressed his own support for Trzaskowski, who he says can “be a spokesman for the left and voters who place their hope in a progressive, open, tolerant Poland”.
Casting their nets wider
From the moment polls closed on Sunday, Duda and Trzaskowski began their efforts to attract other candidates’ voters.
At his campaign event that evening, Duda made a direct appeal to PSL’s generally conservative supporters. He said:
I have no doubts that the supporters of Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz look at the Polish family [and] its value, and at the Polish countryside, in the same way as I do…They have huge respect for the Polish family and believe that it should take absolute precedence in politics.
Duda has also reached out to left-wing voters, saying that though “there are many differences between us, especially in terms of worldview”, they share a desire to “look out for the common man, especially a person who has been wronged, who is weaker, for whom life is hard”.
Yet at the same time, he also appealed to the nationalists. “Very little separates me and Krzysztof Bosak…We have a very large pool of shared values,” said Duda, contrasting himself to the “left-wing Trzaskowski” and noting his rivals support for LGBT rights.
Duda returned to that issue on Monday morning, emphasising during an interview that he sees the family as being based on “a union between a man and a woman”. He also again describing LGBT as an “ideology” and likened it to communism.
Trzaskowski has also sought to appeal to Bosak’s voters, by focusing on their economic priorities. During his speech on Sunday evening, the opposition candidate told Confederation supporters that “we mostly have the same views when it comes to economic freedom”.
He continued this theme during a campaign stop in Płock the next day, saying: “I will be clear: there will be no agreement about raising taxes, new taxes and mass lay-offs.”
Trzaskowski also made overtures to the left. “This will be an election between an open Poland or one which seeks enemies and a president who divides. This will be a choice between those who respect the rights of women, and those who do not,” said the Warsaw mayor on Sunday night.
The final stretch
The two candidates have now set off again on the campaign trail. Duda visited Toruń, Rypin, Kwidzyn and Starograd Gdański on Monday, in a bid to turn out reserve PiS voters who sat out the first round.
In recent weeks, PiS has already led an intense campaign effort in rural Poland, with its front-line politicians meeting voters under the tag #ŁączyNasPolska (Poland Connects Us). Its online campaign has been of unprecedented size, with micro-targeted political ads, according to Rzeczpospolita.
Trzaskowski is also seeking to make overtures beyond the liberal-leaning large cities and into smaller towns and rural areas. He spoke in Gąbin, Płock, Brodnica and Grudziądz on Monday.
A key moment may also be a final presidential debate, though the candidates are still discussing the form it would take (and which TV station would host it).
Trzaskowski has already invited Duda to take part in a debate in which the two could ask each other questions, unlike in last week’s event on state TV, during which candidates could not question one another.
“It is really worth talking about real challenges, about the things discussed by Poles, and not those which are discussed at Nowogrodzka [PiS party headquarters],” said Trzaskowski.
Duda replied that, under the “right conditions,” he would accept. “For me it’s natural; I’ve taken part in many debates and see no problem at all,” he explained. Negotiations, however, are continuing.
Main image credits: Fot. Tomasz Stańczak/Agencja Gazeta
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
