Poland’s Populist Revenge: How Nawrocki Played The Trump Card To Perfection

-Analysis-

WARSAW — Karol Nawrocki stood before his supporters in Warsaw on Sunday evening, grinning. The first forecast of the Polish presidential election had just appeared on the screens behind him, predicting a narrow defeat. But Nawrocki raised his index and middle fingers in a victory sign and shouted, “We will win.“

Many politicians from the conservative PiS party were at the candidate’s event. After Nawrocki’s appearance, they told journalists they would not accept a narrow defeat. In the end, though, that move from the right-wing populist playbook proved unnecessary.

On Monday, it became clear: Nawrocki, the nationalist candidate officially running as an independent but backed by PiS, had narrowly won the election, with just under 51% of the vote. According to projections, the pro-European candidate Rafał Trzaskowski received just over 49%.

The window for political change in Poland — during which Prime Minister Donald Tusk might have repaired the rule of law and introduced liberal reforms — had never been wide open — not while the then-President, Andrzej Duda of PiS, was blocking progress. Now, that window has shut completely.

Karol Nawrocki will continue to use the presidential veto in PiS’s favor, just as Duda did, to block legislation passed by the Tusk government, paving the way for the possible return of the Polish right in the next parliamentary elections.

“We didn’t let ourselves be broken. We succeeded in uniting all Polish patriots,” Nawrocki said Sunday night. In the first round, he had secured a narrow second place behind Trzaskowski, who embodies his complete opposite: Nawrocki, the ex-boxer and former bouncer, versus the polyglot intellectual. Or, as his supporters see it: the man of the people versus the out-of-touch elite.

A perfect stranger

Poland First versus European solidarity. In a move reminiscent of the AfD, Nawrocki calls for a “normal” state, free of the “ideologization” of childhood and education. He supports an anti-Brussels stance, opposes LGBTQI+ rights, rejects liberalizing the country’s strict abortion laws, and, of course, takes a hard line against migrants. “Long live Nawrocki,” declared Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán three days before the election.

Nawrocki owes his victory to voters on the far right, who in the first round had supported the even more radical candidate Sławomir Mentzen and the openly anti-Semitic Grzegorz Braun. Together, they received 21% of the vote. Many of their voters have grown tired of the mainstream parties.

With Nawrocki’s win, Jarosław Kaczyński’s plan succeeded. The 75-year-old former prime minister still calls the shots in the PiS party. Instead of choosing a well-known figure, he pulled Nawrocki, largely unknown and politically inexperienced, out of his hat. The officially “independent” candidate was meant to appeal to those who are fed up with the political establishment, who haven’t forgiven PiS for its strict coronavirus policies, who think PiS is too old, or not radical enough.

All the scandals have bounced right off Nawrocki.

All the scandals have bounced right off Nawrocki. Hooligan brawls in his youth, which he openly admits to. Alleged ties to the criminal underworld; accusations of pimping during his time as a bouncer. The affair with the second home, which he allegedly swindled from a sick pensioner through false promises, even though he initially insisted that, like ordinary people, he owned just one apartment. He chewed nicotine pouches on live TV. Like Donald Trump, he remained unscathed by the scandals. Instead, they seemed to rally his supporters even more tightly around him, because they saw him as a victim of smear campaigns.

And he shares something else with the White House: support from the American right. U.S. President Trump granted him a meeting at the White House, complete with a campaign selfie. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and conservative activist Matt Schlapp gave speeches in Poland urging people to support Nawrocki. “In him, you will have a leader just as strong as Donald Trump,” Noem said at CPAC, a networking event for right-wing populist parties.

Counting on Washington

Nawrocki used this support to his advantage in the campaign. Fearing its longtime enemy Russia and harboring distrust toward its former long-standing enemy Germany, Poland relies more heavily than many other countries on the U.S. for security. And while Trzaskowski advocated for EU solidarity, thereby opposing Trump’s line, Nawrocki could claim: with me, you can count on U.S. backing.

Trzaskowski had hoped that voters who backed the ultra-right, anti-establishment candidates in the first round would stay home rather than switch to the PiS candidate. But instead, some voters who had supported Tusk’s governing coalition in the 2023 parliamentary elections stayed away from the polls. Voter turnout was 71.7%, more than three percentage points higher than in the previous presidential election five years ago — but still below the 2023 record of almost 75%.

On Sunday, Karol Nawrocki thanked all those who supported an “independent candidate.” Shortly afterward, the man to whom Nawrocki owes his rise, and to whom he will likely remain beholden in office, took the stage: Jarosław Kaczyński. He said he was firmly convinced the victory belonged to them “because we are right, because we tell the truth.” Since taking office in December, Donald Tusk, he added, had led the country in the wrong direction, under external control. But that, he said, was just a blip in Poland’s history. “A bad incident, a fatal incident, but just an incident.”