Andrzej Duda, the incumbent Polish president, has narrowly won re-election, taking 51% of the vote in a run-off against the mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski.
Duda ran on a conservative platform and promised to tighten already restrictive abortion laws. According to reports, he also campaigned against ‘LGBT ideology’. Conversely, Trzaskowski ran on a more liberal platform and promised to fix ties with the European Union, as well as saying he would back civil unions for same-sex partners.
In the first round of the election, held at the end of June, Duda won 43.5% of the vote and Trzaskowski managed 30.5%. Only one other candidate, Szymon Holownia, an independent, won more than ten percent of the vote. Holownia secured 13.9%.
Although Duda was officially running as an independent, he received strong backing from the conservative governing party, the Law and Justice Party (known by its Polish abbreviation as PiS), which also helped fund his campaign.
Although the opposition lost, analysts say the narrow margin of victory is a boost for those challenging the government. According to Andrzej Rychard, a political scientist at Warsaw University: ‘Despite Trzaskowski’s defeat, his strong performance looks like a new beginning, a new dynamic for the opposition.’
There was a strong regional and urban-rural split in the vote. The west of the country generally supported Trzaskowski, while the eastern regions, bordering Belarus and Ukraine, backed Duda. There was a similar split between cities and rural communities, with urban areas generally plumping for Trzaskowski and people in villages and the countryside voting for Duda.
The election was originally scheduled for May, but was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.