Why the first round of Poland’s presidential election was a wake-up call for Ukraine's friends

Shock. That’s the word that best describes the reaction of a large number of Poles on the evening of 18 May, right after the first round of the presidential election, when the exit poll results were published.

These results turned out to be completely different from the polling data released just a few days earlier.

Read more about the first-round results and who might win the second round in the article by Yurii Panchenko, European Pravda's editor: Triumph of the Ukrainophobes: how the presidential election became a wake-up call for both Kyiv and the Poles. 

Polls had given every reason to believe that the first round would result in a convincing win for Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw and candidate from the Civic Platform party. It was expected that the first-round results would all but guarantee Trzaskowski’s ultimate victory in the runoff.

But things turned out very differently. And the problem wasn’t just that the lead over Karol Nawrocki, an independent candidate backed by the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), was extremely slim.

The real issue is that the third and fourth places went to far-right (and, importantly for Ukraine – openly anti-Ukrainian) candidates.

Now, the votes of far-right supporters could be decisive in the second round.

This makes Karol Nawrocki the formal frontrunner for the runoff. To win, he needs to convince far-right voters to back him.

And the likely tool to achieve that will be a more critical tone toward Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees.

Meanwhile, for Rafał Trzaskowski to win the second round, he will need to shift his campaign strategy to reach voters who didn’t show up in the first round.

Can Poland, like Romania during its presidential elections, mobilise a pro-European electorate ahead of the runoff?

In Poland, that will be harder. If only because turnout in the first round was already very high at 67.31%. It won’t be easy to achieve a significant increase in turnout for the second round.

Moreover, while in Romania the threat of far-right candidate George Simion winning and turning the country away from the EU mobilised voters, in Poland Karol Nawrocki is not seen as a radical to the same extent, and it’s difficult to label him as far-right.

However, in the second round, he will likely need to radicalise his stance to attract far-right voters, but not go too far.

The prospect of an electoral alliance between Nawrocki and presidential candidate Grzegorz Braun, who received 6.34% of the vote, could alarm many liberal voters.

Braun is an excessively radical figure, even for the Polish far-right Confederation party, which expelled him.

Thus, such an alliance could actually benefit Rafał Trzaskowski.

Another challenge for Nawrocki is that it won’t be easy for him to attract Confederation voters.

The party’s standard rhetoric is that there is no real difference between Civic Platform and Law and Justice (which effectively backs Nawrocki). They are all part of the old political establishment, destined for the scrap heap.

Still, Trzaskowski faces similar challenges.

To win, he must not only mobilise his party’s base but also attract as many left-leaning and moderate right-wing voters as possible.

And that task may prove just as difficult as the one facing his opponent.

The second round is set to be held on 1 June. The next two weeks could be a tough test for Ukrainian-Polish relations.