Its Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the next two weeks will "determine the future of Poland" as the country prepares to hold a presidential runoff vote on June 1 after a picky first round of matches.

Official results released on Monday showed that the mayor of Warsaw and candidate of the Tusk Civic Alliance, Rafał Trzaskowski, received a pro-European centre, with 31.36% of the vote. With the support of the Populist Right Legal and Justice Party (PIS), Karol Nawrocki narrowly lags behind him and has won 29.54% of the vote.

Trzaskowski has long been seen as a leader, and his election will put Poland in an end a months-long standoff between the centrist-led parliament and the presidency of populist rights.

Tusk and his coalition took power in 2023, with a commitment to reverse the erosion of democratic checks and balances marked by PIS in the administration’s eight years of government.

However, their efforts were partially plagued by outgoing President Andrzej Duda, a close ally of the former PIS administration and a supporter of Donald Trump. Duda has used his presidential veto power to repeatedly block the reform of the new government, prompting Tusk to comment in parliament last month: "It's hard to rule all of these veto powers with a hostile president."

The deadlock is vaguely visible in the presidential election, turning the vote into a question of whether voters want to go through a political overhaul that begins in 2023, when PIS deported from the power of the country's parliament.

As the results of surpassing expectations on Sunday night get closer, Tusk enters social media in an attempt to inspire voters. Now everything is under threat, he wrote, adding that “the next two weeks will determine the future of Poland”. "No step by step!" he said.

Hours after the first round score entered, the two candidates returned to the campaign. Trzaskowski distributed sweet yeast bread in the southern central city of Kielce in a commitment to reform the judiciary and liberalize the country's abortion laws. Nawrocki in Gdańsk provides donuts for those who admire Trump, strongly oppose the language of immigration and promise to combat "awaken" liberal values.

It's a glimpse of the possibility the country may face. "The next two weeks of movement will be very polarized, and it is a confrontation between Poland's two visions: pro-EU, liberals and progressive and nationalists, Trump and conservatives," Piotr Buras, director of the Warsaw Council of European Foreign Relations, told the Associated Press.

Before the June 1 runoff, both candidates had to adjust their campaign to get votes, a complex feat, given the various candidates in the first round. For Trzaskowski, the work became even more difficult, as the right and far-right candidates won more than half of the votes in the first round.

Supporters of Liberal radical candidate Sławomir Mentzen ranked third with 14.8% of Sunday's vote, which could prove to be the key to the second round. Mentzen, a staunch European skeptic who opposes abortion and immigration, targets the country's 1 million Ukrainian refugees, accusing them of using Poland.

Only 6% of voters supported Grzegorz Braun, leaping lawmakers from the far-right Federalist Party to fourth place. Braun used fire extinguishers to pop Hanukkah candles in the Polish parliament in protest to celebrate the Jewish holiday.

About 14% of the votes were voted by center-right Szymon Hołownia, New Left Magdalena Biejat and Hard-Left candidate Adrian Zandberg.

Aleks Szczerbiak, a political professor at the University of Sussex, said there are two weeks left before voters return to the poll, which is anyone’s final election as president. "I think it's definitely playable," he said. "I think it's totally neck and neck, and in many ways, the sport is just reset."