Sunday's result from the first-round of voting in the Polish presidential election was not ideal for Rafal Trzaskowski, the centrist mayor of Warsaw, who has been the frontrunner throughout the campaign.
For months, he had consistently polled between 4% and 7% ahead of his closest rival, conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki, who is endorsed by Law and Justice (PiS), a nationalist party that governed Poland between 2015 and 2023.
But like Romanian voters last Sunday, Polish voters also delivered a result that surprised pollsters.
Mr Nawrocki, a 42-year-old historian, won 29.7% of votes and is now within touching distance of Mr Trzaskowski, who topped the poll on 31.2%.
The two candidates will contest the second round run-off on 1 June.
Poland's president holds a largely ceremonial role but has the power to veto legislation or refer it to the country's constitutional court for further deliberation.
For the past 18 months, Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-EU government has clashed with outgoing president Andrzej Duda, a conservative who aligns with PiS, over his veto or deferral of various bills, which aim to reverse the changes PiS enacted to the judiciary during its eight years in government.
Last October, Mr Duda vetoed a government bill to overhaul the country’s constitutional court, currently stacked with judges appointed by PiS.
In April, he decided not to sign a bill criminalising hate speech based on a person’s sexual orientation, which parliament had passed. Instead, he referred it to the constitutional court, a move criticised by Polish LGBTQ groups.
Mr Trzaskowski, a 53-year-old polyglot who is a member of Mr Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition, would be more likely to sign the coalition’s bills into law were he to become president.
But if Mr Nawrocki were to win, it would be a continuation of an uneasy cohabitation between the government and the president’s office until the next general election in 2027.
In other words, political gridlock would ensue and it would further sap voter confidence in the coalition government’s ability to deliver the kind of sweeping progressive legislation it promised when elected.
Recent Polish elections have proved to be very tight contests between broad left to centre-right blocs and nationalist-conservatives.
The two camps are diametrically opposed and hold very different visions for Poland’s future: a centrist, pro-EU Poland versus a conservative, Eurosceptic Poland that follows Catholic doctrine on social policy. In recent elections, the electorate has split roughly 50-50 between both camps.
The second-round run-off between Mr Trzaskowski and Mr Nawrocki is sticking to that script.
Mr Nawrocki’s vote share in the first-round mirrors PiS's current support base and he will be hoping to attract voters who cast their ballots in the first round for two-far-right candidates, Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun, who are now eliminated.
Mr Mentzen, the 38-year-old co-leader of Confederation, an alliance of far-right parties that promotes itself as pro-business (it wants low income taxes for entrepreneurs) and socially conservative (it opposes abortion), had a strong election, winning almost 15% of votes.
A second and more extreme far-right candidate, Grzegorz Braun, dumbfounded pollsters by winning 6.3% of votes.
It means that 21% of Polish voters cast their ballots for a far-right candidate last Sunday, reflecting an ongoing drift towards radical-right politics in Poland. (Interestingly, 37% of Polish voters living in Ireland voted for Mr Trzaskowski in Sunday's poll, but after him, the second and third most popular candidates for the diaspora in Ireland were Mr Mentzen and Mr Braun).
Mr Mentzen’s blend of libertarian politics and social conservatism has appealed to young male voters in particular.
More than one in three young men aged 18 to 29, and one in four men aged 30 to 39, voted for him.
But it is unclear if a majority of Mr Mentzen's voters, or those who voted for Mr Braun, will support Mr Nawrocki in the second round.
Mr Mentzen may not endorse Mr Narowcki given that Confederation has consistently stated since the parliamentary election campaign in 2023 that it will not cooperate with PiS.
Still, many Mentzen and Braun voters could support Mr Nawrocki in the second round simply because he is the conservative candidate left in the race.
In that case, Mr Nawrocki could win close to 50% of votes in the second round.
For Mr Trzaskowski to win, he will need to galvanise a bigger turnout of left, liberal and centrist voters in the second round.
In the first round vote, two left-wing candidates won a combined vote share of 10%, and another centre-right candidate, Szymon Holownia, who underperformed, won 5% of votes. In theory, most of those voters should now back Mr Trzaskowski.
Problematically for the Warsaw mayor, some left and liberal voters are displeased with his lurch to the right on immigration.
He supports the Tusk government’s stance on tougher border controls to stop irregular migration. In March, the ruling coalition passed legislation to pause the right to claim asylum for irregular migrants who cross into Poland from Belarus, proving that it can be even more hardline on immigration than PiS.
Five years ago, Mr Trzaskowski ran for president against Mr Duda on a liberal platform, championing the cause of women's rights and civil union for same-sex couples. He lost that election narrowly.
He still supports the liberalisation of Poland's abortion laws, some of the strictest in Europe, but has not put the issue at the centre of his campaign this time round. Nor does supporting civil union for same-sex couples feature in his current manifesto online.
Polish elections are won in small town Poland, not in big cities where liberal, left and centre-right candidates enjoy comfortable levels of support. So this time, Mr Trzaskowski has toned down his calls for progressive change.
Voters in small town and rural Poland make up approximately 40% of the electorate and a majority of them are more likely to support Mr Nawrocki's social conservative agenda.
A clear takeaway from Sunday's first round is that Poland’s far-right is on the rise, outperforming candidates from the smaller left and centre-right parties. That is to Mr Nawrocki's advantage going into the second round.
The contest, which seemed to be in Mr Trzaskowski’s hands a few weeks ago, looks likely to go down to the wire on 1 June.
