Polls voted in a cliff-bridge presidential election on Sunday, which would determine whether Warsaw remains an EU and Ukraine ally or whether President Donald Trump's Magma movement has achieved a rare victory outside the United States.
The choice was between the government-recognized Pro-eu Warsaw Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski and the right-wing Hardliner Karol Nawrocki, supported by the Opposition Law and Justice (PIS) Party. The two are voting to enter runoff in their necks and necks after Trzaskowski nearly won the first round of votes last month.
The vote is widely regarded as the leader of the right-wing populist magazine movement, which supported Navoroki and sent senior Trump administration officials to the rally just days before the vote.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called on the Poles to “election the right leader” on Tuesday and described Trzaskowski as “absolute train wreck.”
"You will be the leader in transforming Europe into conservative values," Nom said at a conservative political action meeting held in Jasionka near the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Nawrocki's victory will tide a series of magazine losses in Canada, Australia and Romania and consolidate other Eurosceptics and Ukrainian riverside leaders such as Czech billionaire Andrej Babiš, who hopes to return after the election to Prime Minister Viktor Bánseyseack in of searceent of therecept of unions of unions the Premphersion''
Nawrocki performed better than expected in the first round of the vote, described by Prime Minister Donald Tusk as a "yellow card" who apologized for the government's shortcomings.
Tusk warned that the Nawrocki presidency could sweep away his long-publicized reforms that had been blocked by outgoing president Andrzej Duda, also a PIS nominee. These reforms include a reversal of the judicial overhaul carried out by the previous PIS government that caused the EU funding to freeze in Poland. The European Commission released billions of euros when it returned to power in 2023, but reforms are still underway.
"Navaloki's victory may be a harbinger of Poland's later fall into domestic political turmoil, and his main task is to pave the way for Pios' return to power," said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw Bureau of the European Commission on Foreign Relations.
"This will undermine the legitimacy of the ivory government and narrow the space for maneuvering, which will actually greatly weaken the international status of the Polish prime minister," Buras added.
Analysts say the movement has achieved exposed deep malfunctions in Polish society regardless of the outcome on Sunday and has developed anger at political institutions, including the PIS opposition.
In the first round of voting, many young Poles supported radical candidates at both ends of the political sphere, in protest votes against Tusk, and his long-standing political enemy, founded PIS's long-standing political enemy in 2001.
Trzaskowski's victory will strengthen Tusk's fragile alliance and provide the task of accelerating stagnant reforms. But the Prime Minister will continue to bear the pressure of delivery.
Prior to Sunday's Knife Voting, Tusk insisted that even if Nawrocki became president, he would not call the Snap parliamentary elections before the regular elections scheduled for 2027.
The Trzaskowski presidency will maintain “the current curriculum of the government in domestic and international policies, but that does not mean the end of polarization and there will be no other battle in 2027.”