The liberal favourite stumbles in Poland’s presidential election

Since neither man topped the 50% needed to win outright, Mr Trzaskowski, the deputy head of Mr Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform, will face Mr Nawrocki, a historian backed by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, in a run-off on June 1st. The rest of the first-round votes went to minor candidates. Slawomir Mentzen of the far-right Konfederacja party, was projected to come in third with 15.4%. Grzegorz Braun, a member of the European Parliament who spreads conspiracy theories about Jews, drew an estimated 6.2%. Official results are expected by May 19th.

At Mr Nawrocki’s election-night party, inside the Gdansk shipyards, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, the room erupted in cheers and applause as the results came in. Introduced as “the future president", Mr Nawrocki called on Mr Mentzen, who also put in a surprisingly strong showing, to back him in the second round. “We both want a Poland that is sovereign, rich, strong and safe," he said.

In Sandomierz, where Mr Trzaskowski and his supporters had come together to celebrate, the cheers were less convincing. “This result shows how strong and determined we have to be," said the Warsaw mayor, “and how much work is ahead of us."

Mr Trzaskowski had been the favourite coming into the first round. That may no longer be the case. Support for Mr Nawrocki and the far right, including candidates like Mr Mentzen and Mr Braun, added up to nearly 52%. “This is an excellent result for the entire right wing," says Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Trzaskowski is in a weaker position ahead of the second round."

Mr Nawrocki and PiS have sought to make the election into a referendum on Mr Tusk’s government. That will remain their theme in the run-off. Seventeen months of Mr Tusk’s rule have disappointed most Poles. His government, an alliance of free marketeers, conservatives, leftists and greens, has been unable to deliver on many of its promises, including a pledge to chip away at Poland’s almost complete ban on abortion.

A standoff with the current PiS-backed president, Andrzej Duda, is one reason. The other is divisions within Mr Tusk’s ruling alliance. “What unites them is their opposition to PiS," says Andrzej Stankiewicz, a well-known journalist, “but not much else."

Poles expect their presidents to rise above party politics, says Renata Mienkowska-Norkiene, an academic at the University of Warsaw. To eke out a win, therefore, Mr Trzaskowski needs to convince progressives, as well as undecided and swing voters, that he can stand somewhat apart from the government, she says. “Unless he distances himself from Tusk over the next two weeks, it’s game over."

Presidents in Poland have fewer powers than in countries like America and France, but they do matter. They can veto laws, shape foreign policy and appoint ambassadors. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS leader who picked Mr Nawrocki as his party’s candidate, hopes to repeat the feat he pulled off a decade ago, when he anointed Mr Duda, a relative unknown, to run for the presidency. Mr Duda pulled off an upset by defeating the Civic Platform incumbent and won a second term in 2020 when he prevailed over Mr Trzaskowski by a thin margin.

Since Mr Tusk’s coalition came to power, Mr Duda has vetoed or blocked some two dozen bills. Those include crucial reforms to the judiciary, which PiS had packed with political appointees while it was in power between 2015 and 2023. The government has had to shelve a number of other reforms, for fear that they too would be struck down.

Mr Trzaskowski’s supporters say only a president who sees eye to eye with the government can allow it to push ahead with these overdue measures. Katarzyna, a voter in Warsaw, said she backed the Warsaw mayor so as to keep Eurosceptics out of the presidential palace. “I’m voting for the European Union," she says. “I cannot imagine Poland leaving the EU."

Mr Nawrocki’s voters, in contrast, want a less intertwined relationship with Europe. Mr Tusk has surrendered Poland’s sovereignty to the “federalists" in the EU, and to Germany, says one. Mr Kaczynski once went so far as to call Mr Tusk a “German agent." The claim, though baseless, has become an article of faith among PiS supporters. The party does not back leaving the EU, but wants the bloc overhauled and many of its key policies shelved. The European Green Deal is “madness," says Piotr Glinski, a former PiS deputy prime minister. “These European solutions might be the end of us."

Both of the presidential contenders agree on the need to invest in defence; Poland has vowed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP, the highest level in NATO. Both adamantly back Ukraine against Russia. But Mr Nawrocki has positioned himself as the candidate better suited to work with Donald Trump, who welcomed him in the White House in early May. Mr Trzaskowski, a former secretary of state for European affairs, has excellent contacts in Brussels.

Much will depend on Mr Mentzen and his electorate, a mostly young crew of libertarians, far-rightists and immigration foes. Although Konfederacja has more in common with PiS, its voters cannot be expected to switch to Mr Nawrocki en masse. (The two parties disagree on economics: PiS is highly statist.) Many of them may stay home on June 1st. Either way, Mr Trzaskowski faces an uphill battle in the second round.