Populist Karol Nawrocki wins Polish presidential election, setting stage for more clashes with PM Tusk

By Rob Picheta, CNN

(CNN) — A historian and populist firebrand who boasted about his brawls with soccer hooligans has narrowly won Poland’s presidential election, in a political upset that could torpedo the centrist government’s efforts to unspool the legacy of authoritarianism in the country.

Karol Nawrocki, the candidate aligned with Poland’s right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, won 50.89% of the vote, defeating the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski – long the favorite to win – in a head-to-head run-off.

The result extends PiS’ 10-year occupancy of the presidential palace and could spell disaster for Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose pledge to erase PiS’ fingerprints from Poland’s embattled institutions saw him clash repeatedly with the outgoing President Andrzej Duda.

Nawrocki is a champion of US President Donald Trump and visited the White House in the weeks before the election. He was the underdog throughout the campaign, but came a close second to Trzaskowski in the first round of voting two weeks ago, having survived a series of damaging stories about his past. He picked up a late endorsement from the third-placed, far-right candidate.

The 42-year-old historian will now yield the hugely powerful presidential veto, which Duda used frequently to thwart Tusk’s agenda. The European Union has looked to Tusk for a blueprint on undoing the effects of populism on a democracy – but a victory for Nawrocki was not part of the plan.

Though Polish presidential candidates often stand as individuals, rather than representatives of a party, there is little hiding their affiliations, and each major party historically endorses and campaigns for a candidate.

Tusk ousted PiS from government in a heated parliamentary election in 2023, but Nawrocki’s victory denies him an open road to fully undo the transformation of the Polish state overseen by PiS during an eight-year stint in government.

A checkered past

Nawrocki is a first-time politician who has led two influential cultural bodies in Poland – the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, and then the Institute of National Remembrance, a state-funded research facility whose purpose became increasingly politicized as PiS took a nationalistic approach to the telling of Polish history.

He ran a campaign that was seemingly stuck in defensive mode. Scandals about his alleged use of a Gdansk apartment as a second home and his supposed ties to the northern port city’s underworld dogged his run. In March it even emerged that he had appeared on a television show, in disguise and with his face blurred, to praise his own book.

And when confronted with claims that he took part in organized fights between rival soccer fans – known in Poland as an ustawka, or “set up” – Nawrocki sought to use the revelations to his advantage, describing the clashes as “noble,” according to CNN affiliate TVN24.

On the campaign trail, he emphasized his Catholic faith, pledged to reduce migration, and was relentlessly critical of Brussels and of Tusk. He received a late flurry of support from attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which held its first-ever gathering in Poland earlier this week, cementing a years-long convergence between the populist right movements in Poland and the US.

His victory looked unlikely until the first round of voting two weeks ago, which showed him narrowly behind Trzaskowski and revealed greater levels of support than expected for a smattering of far-right and extreme-right figures, some of whom subsequently said they would vote for Nawrocki.

The result is the worst-case scenario for Tusk’s government, which was elected after eight toxic years in Polish politics but which has labored in recent months to deliver on its ambitious agenda.

Tusk had hoped that a Trzaskowski presidency would remove the last major roadblock to his efforts to renew the independence of Poland’s judiciary, media and cultural bodies.

Instead, the result sets the stage for a new round of confrontations between Poland’s president and prime minister. Nawrocki will be expected to follow the blueprint set by Duda, who blocked several attempts by Tusk to undo the PiS’ judicial reforms and stalled progress on bills relating to hate crime and contraception access, either by vetoing them or sending them into legal gridlock.

And it essentially snuffs out any prospect that Poland’s near-total abortion ban and its prohibition of same-sex civil partnerships will be undone. Tusk had promised to relax both bans, but they are supported by some of the more socially conservative lawmakers propping up his government, and the threat of a presidential veto likely renders any efforts at persuasion futile.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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