Why does next year’s Polish presidential election matter so much?

By Aleks Szczerbiak

The victory of a government-aligned candidate in next year’s presidential election will remove a major obstacle to the administration’s institutional reform and elite replacement project.

If a right-wing opposition-backed candidate wins, the government can expect continued resistance from the presidential palace for the remainder of its parliamentary term.

A huge moment in Polish politics

Next summer, Poland is scheduled to hold a crucial presidential election, the culmination of the country’s protracted electoral marathon that began with last October’s parliamentary poll, and continued through April’s local and June’s European Parliament elections.

This election will be a huge moment in Polish politics. Even though the first round of voting is not scheduled until next May, with a second round run-off between the top two candidates if no one secures an outright majority, the campaign is already beginning to hot up.

Last December, a new coalition government led by Donald Tusk, who had served as Polish prime minister between 2007-14 and then European Council president from 2014-19, was sworn in, ending the eight-year rule of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Tusk is leader of the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO), which once again became the country’s main governing party.

The new coalition also includes the eclectic Third Way (Trzecia Droga) alliance – which itself comprises the agrarian-centrist Polish People’s Party (PSL) and the liberal-centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) grouping formed to capitalise on TV personality-turned-politician Szymon Hołownia’s strong third place in the 2020 presidential election – and the smaller New Left (Nowa Lewica) party, the main component of a broader Left (Lewica) electoral alliance.

However, the new government has had to “cohabit” with PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda, and lacks the three-fifths parliamentary majority required to overturn his legislative veto.

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This, together with intra-coalition disputes, has acted as a major obstacle to the government’s efforts to unravel its predecessor’s legacy and implement deep institutional reforms.

In some cases, it has also hindered the new administration’s attempts to replace PiS’s state office nominations where this requires legislation or presidential sign-off (although it has used various legal get-arounds and loopholes to, for example, replace the management of state-owned media and the national prosecutor).

Duda has, for example, made it clear that he will block government attempts to liberalise the country’s restrictive abortion law, and unpick its predecessor’s key justice system reforms if they undermine the legitimacy of his judicial appointments made since PiS introduced its changes.

All of this means that the presidential election result will have huge implications for whether the ruling coalition can govern effectively during the remainder of its term of office, which is set to run until autumn 2027. Given the exceptionally high stakes, the presidential campaign is likely to be as, if not more, polarised and closely-fought than last year’s parliamentary poll.

Trzaskowski is favourite

PO’s most likely candidate is generally assumed to be Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who already has a very high national profile having lost narrowly to Duda in summer 2020.

Most opinion polls show Trzaskowski to be the current frontrunner, securing around 30-35% of the vote in the first round and winning run-offs with every hypothetical second round opponent.

Trzaskowski’s great advantage is that, although he is a PO deputy leader and previously held ministerial posts, in the minds of many voters he is not associated with either the current or previous administrations led by the party because he is not immersed in day-to-day political struggles.

However – although, again, he is not perceived this way by many voters – Trzaskowski is distinctly more socially liberal on moral-cultural issues than the average Pole. His opponents will, for example, no doubt make great play of the fact that his administration banned the display of religious symbols, including crosses, from Warsaw city offices.

While this probably went down well in the liberal and relatively secular capital, to win a presidential election he will also need to appeal to Poles living in more religious and socially conservative smaller and medium-sized towns.

At the same time, although he has seemingly declared unambiguously that he will not be running, Tusk himself should not be ruled out as a possible candidate; he ruled himself out of the running for the EU Council presidency with equal vigour ten years ago, shortly before taking up the post.

Not only would this crown his political career (he was bitterly disappointed when he lost the 2005 presidential election), it would provide a safe haven for him if PiS were to regain power in 2027 and embark upon the kind of “reckoning” (rozliczenie) with its predecessor’s legacy that the current PO-led administration is pursuing.

However, a Tusk candidacy would also be extremely risky. He is a very polarising figure with loyal devotees among supporters of the ruling party but also legions of fierce opponents who revile him with a passion, so may actually help to mobilise the governing coalition’s opponents as well.

That is one of the reasons that foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, who has used his position to raise his profile both nationally and internationally, is often floated as another potential ruling party contender. Sikorski clearly has presidential ambitions, having lost out in a PO primary election in 2010, although he has yet to throw his hat in the ring unambiguously, and lacks a strong personal base of support within the party.

The decision on who will be the PO candidate is only expected to be made formally before the end of the year, although media pressure on the party to declare will increase now that the summer holiday period is over.

For his part, Tusk will probably hesitate until the last possible moment before deciding whether or not to run. He is most likely to stand if all the current governing coalition parties agree to put forward a single candidate.

Hołownia and The Left will be squeezed

However, it is almost certain that there will be at least one other candidate from within the ruling coalition. It is widely assumed that Hołownia views another presidential bid as central to his political project.

His showman-like performances in the high profile post of speaker of the Sejm, Poland’s more powerful lower parliamentary chamber (dubbed “Sejmflix”), gave him an initial bump in popularity when he was appointed last November.

But his star appears to have waned and the Third Way saw its vote share slump from 14% in last October’s parliamentary election to less than 7% in June’s European poll.

Most commentators also expect the PSL to give Hołownia a clear run as the sole Third Way candidate. The party’s leader, and current defence minister and deputy prime minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz performed badly when he stood for the presidency in 2020, securing only 2% of the vote.

However, feeling that it has been sidelined within the ruling coalition, the party has been asserting itself recently and there is some speculation that it might after all stand its own candidate. Past experience suggests that not being visible during such a high profile contest can be extremely damaging for a party’s future electoral prospects.

The Left will also almost certainly stand its own candidate, which is likely to be Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, the articulate and media-friendly minister for family, employment and social policy.

Even if its candidate has no chance of winning, the election will be crucial in raising the profile of a grouping that has lost support in every recent election.

The Left vote has been squeezed as PO has shifted to the liberal left on moral-cultural issues such as abortion and state recognition of same-sex partnerships – which, rather than attitudes towards socio-economic questions, is the main way that “left” and “right” are defined by Polish voters – and is likely to be so again, especially if Trzaskowski is a candidate.

No obvious PiS candidate

While defeat would scupper the ruling coalition’s chances of governing effectively during the rest of its term of office, losing the presidency would remove PiS’s main remaining source of access to the levers of state power.

Electoral victory would, on the other hand, provide a huge boost to the party’s revival. PiS’s strong performance in April’s local and June’s European elections showed that it remains a formidable political force. However, unlike PO, the party has no obvious presidential candidate.

Among the potential candidates, former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki currently enjoys the most popular support, coming second in opinion polls with around 25-30%. However, Morawiecki is burdened by association with the previous government and presided over PiS’s 2023 election defeat.

By too openly promoting his own future party leadership ambitions he has also fallen foul of PiS’s powerful leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who rules the party with an iron rod and has made it clear that he is looking for a presidential candidate unencumbered by the past.

Another well-known name that has been bandied about as a potential candidate is former defence minister and deputy prime minister Mariusz Błaszczak, who Kaczyński has even floated as his potential successor as party leader. But Błaszczak’s drab image and reputation as a very poor campaigner probably rules him out too.

So PiS’s candidate is likely to come from the younger generation of less well-known second-tier political figures whom it will be easier for the party to “re-invent”. The process of choosing a candidate has been ongoing for some time and PiS is currently conducting research on which of these would have the best chance of victory.

The names floated most often are former provincial governors Tobiasz Bocheński, who lost to Trzaskowski in April’s Warsaw mayoral election but performed creditably in the June European poll, and parliamentary deputy Zbigniew Bogucki, together with the head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) historical foundation Karol Nawrocki.

PiS is likely to announce its presidential candidate on 11 November, the anniversary of Poland regaining its independence in 1918, hoping to repeat the successful launch of Duda’s candidacy ten years ago.

At the time, he was a young and an almost completely unknown member of the European Parliament who seemingly came from nowhere to defeat the apparent hot-favourite, PO incumbent Bronisław Komorowski.

However, this time the context will be very different. PO was exhausted and out of ideas after eight years in office, while Komorowski ran an extremely complacent and uninspiring campaign. PiS could also be handicapped by the fact that it is set to lose millions of zloty of state funding after the National Electoral Commission (PKW), Poland’s top electoral body, rejected its 2023 election campaign financial statement last month.

Will Mentzen be the kingmaker?

However, although the top two candidates are almost certain to come from PO and PiS, the “dark horse” of the presidential race could well be the radical-right free-market Confederation (Konfederacja) grouping, whose candidate will be the charismatic young entrepreneur Sławomir Mentzen.

Confederation surged to finish in third place with 12% of the vote in the European election (up from 7% in the October parliamentary poll) and the grouping is confident that, with a good campaign, Mentzen’s low tax message could pick up much of Poland 2050’s support among the business community and finish third, making it the “kingmaker” in a second round run-off.

Mentzen is also probably the most effective utiliser of the internet among Polish politicians, where he has developed a strong online presence through channels such as TikTok.

However, Mentzen’s image as a youthful social media influencer means that he lacks some of the gravitas that many Poles associate with the head of state, which could disadvantage him in the presidential race.

Main image credit: Prezydent.pl

Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. The original version of this article appeared here.