According to data from more than 98% of Poland’s electoral districts published on the Polish National Electoral Office’s website just after 3 a.m. on Monday, June 2nd, PiS-backed conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki beat his liberal opponent, liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski in the second round of Poland’s presidential election.
The latest exit survey by pollster Ipsos, which was released just after 1 a.m. local time on Monday, already indicated that Nawrocki was in the lead at 51%, a difference compared to Trzaskowski’s 49% beyond the 0.5 percentage point margin of error.
The Polish National Electoral Office reported on Monday morning that turnout was a wopping 71.63%. According to the Office, Nawrocki gathered around 460,000 more votes than Trzaskowski.
Preliminary data suggest that young people and supporters of the radical right swung behind Nawrocki amid widespread division.
The result comes after Trzaskowski claimed victory after the early exit poll. Nawrocki, meanwhile, lauded the support of “patriots” across Poland and vowed: “We will win; tonight we will win.”
Polling stations in Poland opened at 7 a.m. this morning and remained open until 9 p.m., with close to 29 million Polish voting age citizens having the opportunity to cast their votes at more than 32,000 locations, some 700,000 abroad. According to Polish law, there was no campaigning on election day.
Last week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán endorsed the PiS-backed candidate at CPAC Poland and CPAC Hungary respectively. Sławomir Mentzen of Konfederacja, who came out third in the first round of the election, did not explicitly express support for Nawrocki ahead of the voting, but he did say he saw “no reason” why he should back Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal Warsaw mayor who won the first round of the election with a small margin ahead of Karol Nawrocki.
