This Sunday, Poles will turn out at some 27,000 polling stations countrywide to elect their new head of state.

Polish Constitution makes a president weak if he is dealing with a large parliamentary majority but pretty strong if the majority is not enough to reject his vetoing powers. A president facing an opposed parliamentary majority not strong enough to counter his blocks adds an extra layer of day-to-day conflicted politicking in a polarised society. That has been the case since 2023, as the incumbent President Andrzej Duda has pretty much stopped the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in its tracks.

Whoever will emerge victorious on Sunday, his term will sooner or later become underpinned by the political conflict that has defined Poland for 20 years now. The price will be stalled reforms or even a Trump-like comeback of hardcore populism that will push Poland down the ranks of EU importance, weakening the country, which is perhaps the EU’s most exposed member state to the fallout from Russia’s reinvigorated adventurism.

The new president will be either the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, or the radical populist right-winger, Karol Nawrocki. Polls do not give either a decisive advantage, leaving the outcome subject to unpredictable last-minute swings in voter behaviour or random factors like weather.

The big picture is that, for Trzaskowski, mobilising voters disillusioned by the Tusk government – which Trzaskowski is naturally very close to – will be key. He will also need to scoop as much support from the far right as possible, all the while hoping that doing so will not cause too many left-leaning voters to abstain.

Nawrocki is likely to win over the majority of far-right voters who backed their two candidates in the first round of the vote on May 18. The outcome will hinge on whether Trzaskowski can mobilise more people that Nawrocki will attract from the far-right constituency.

A choice for the ages
The Sunday vote will matter for years in Poland and beyond. Trzaskowski is backed by the Tusk coalition and is expected to work hand in hand with it, although he has pledged to be an independent president. The outgoing Duda has been seen as politically controlled by the party that had first fielded him to run for the office in 2015, Law and Justice (PiS).

Nawrocki is PiS’s new invention. Contrary to early assessments, PiS might just do the Duda trick again of pulling a candidate out of nowhere to inflate him thanks to extreme polarisation that has voters ignore anything but party colours.

Nawrocki’s possible ascent to Poland’s highest office is expected to plunge Poland into chaos, as he will be tasked with obstructing the Tusk government to an even greater extent than Duda. “We will miss Duda one day,” the coalition MPs are heard in the media.

A president’s term is five years but the political set-ups with Trzaskowski or Nawrocki that will emerge on Sunday may not last that long. In fact, Poland’s politics might be turned on its head in 2027 after the next general election.

President Nawrocki is likely to sabotage the Tusk government to pave PiS a path to victory in 2027, giving the radical right full power once again. It would also mark a rare win for the MAGA-inspired movement after their affinity with Trump sank populists in Australia and Canada.

On the other hand, President Trzaskowski will make life far easier for Tusk by signing off on key reforms just in time to convince voters the government is working, after all. If that won’t work, Trzaskowski will find himself in Duda’s shoes in little over two years – facing a hostile government until the end of his term in 2030. And being his camp’s last important power centre.

Atom, airports and abortions 
Just how much the political chess between liberals and populists, and a president siding with one or the other, will impede the pace of reforms is anyone’s guess.

For all the bad press Nawrocki has received as gangsters’ associate, pimp, football hooligan and crook (all real stories about him that have been published in the unsympathetic media in recent months; he has sued the news website Onet for one) he is unlikely to give the Tusk government’s blanket vetoes, as that would harm him and his political camp, too.

This applies to strategic undertakings like Poland’s energy transformation. Trzaskowski and Nawrocki differ on the use of coal but both have supported Poland’s virgin nuclear power plant project, which is planned to go on-grid in the late 2030s. 

There also are differences as to the way forward to build CPK, Poland’s mammoth central airport that is expected to take over from Warsaw Chopin Airport by the early 2030s. But both candidates have spoken in favour.

Both frontrunners have also spoken against any reform of Poland’s tax system other than simplifying it and reducing tax rates – conveniently not mentioning Poland’s growing needs to spend more on defence, education and healthcare, let alone adaptation to climate crisis.

In broader economic terms, a Nawrocki victory might constitute a short-lived shock for the stock market and investors who may view it as a blow to Poland’s economic prospects. Such shocks typically subside after a relatively short time since the president’s prerogatives hardly cover the economy. Poland's economy is currently forecast to expand 3%-4% in 2025.

That said, a president prone to unrelenting conflict with the government would heighten uncertainty over the direction of the government’s economic policy simply by threatening to veto key legislation. Questions would hang again over potential disruptions to the flow of funds from the National Recovery Plan (which were held up under PiS), and the risk of stalled investment.

On matters that Trzaskowski made big on his ticket as the long-awaited remedy to the PiS era of 2015-2023, Nawrocki is a hard-headed opposition.

These include fundamental issues like rolling back PiS’s judiciary reforms, so far blocked by Duda, any sort of progressive change on same-sex couples’ rights and easing Poland’s draconian abortion regulation.

Make Poland Great Again?
Trzaskowski and Nawrocki also differ on foreign policy even though a president’s role is limited in that respect – but not of zero importance. 

While foreign policy is a domain of the government, Trzaskowski can be instrumental in supporting Tusk’s push to integrate Poland more deeply with the EU, particularly by strengthening ties with key players like Germany or France.

Nawrocki opposes this strategy, instead favouring stronger ties with Central and Eastern European countries to counterbalance the Franco-German axis PiS claims has a grip on the EU. He also argues relations with the United States are key while resisting the development of a European defence capability separate from NATO.

The Trump administration weighed in on the election, picking Poland for a foreign rendition of MAGA’s event, the CPAC, this week. There, Trump officials spoke highly of Nawrocki while denouncing Trzaskowski.

Trzaskowski is a strong trans-Atlanticist, too, but has spoken more cautiously of Trump because of his apparent policy of disengaging from Europe by threatening trade war or reducing military presence. 

However, both Trzaskowski and Nawrocki have kept quiet about further EU integration on contentious issues such as migration and climate policy due to public resistance ahead of elections. Their stance might shift once in power, although Trzaskowski appears more likely to move.

On the war in Ukraine, both candidates back Polish support for Kyiv’s resistance against Russia but differ in their approaches. Trzaskowski supports Ukraine’s EU and NATO accession while calling for limits on Ukrainian refugees’ social benefits and a greater focus on Polish interests. 

Nawrocki has spoken against Kyiv’s NATO membership and has painted the government’s Ukraine policy in starker terms as driving Poland to be Ukraine’s “subsidiary enterprise” at the expense of Polish farmers or politics of memory, relating to the unresolved issues of Polish victims of Ukraine’s nationalist movement in the 1940s.