section_path: Abstract
section_name: Abstract
paragraph_text: Presidential elections were held in Poland on 18 May 2025. As no candidate received a majority of the vote, a second round was held on 1 June 2025. The outgoing president Andrzej Duda was ineligible for re-election. The election saw the largest number of candidates since the 1995 presidential election, with 13 candidates running for president. The second round was won by conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki who was backed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party.
  
  The Prime Minister 's, the Civic Coalition, supported Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw and runner-up of the 2020 election, who came first in the first round of voting, followed by Nawrocki. The right-wing candidates, Nawrocki, Sławomir Mentzen (New Hope) and Grzegorz Braun of the Confederation of the Polish Crown overperformed polls, winning 29.5%, 14.8% and 6.3% respectively, coming in second, third and fourth. Centrist candidate Szymon Hołownia (PL2050) received 4.99% of the vote while the left-wing candidates together secured 10.18%, with coalition candidate Magdalena Biejat (The Left) coming below opposition Adrian Zandberg (Razem).
  
  Nawrocki ran on a Christian nationalist and culturally conservative platform, focusing his campaign against the incumbent government. Nawrocki's platform called for significant government intervention in the economy, maintaining close ties between the Catholic Church and the Polish government, the maintenance of Poland's harsh abortion laws, also being in opposition to legalization of same-sex marriage or civil unions, citing the sexual ethics of the Catholic Church and protection of the family. Trzaskowski supported economic liberalization, European integration, the broad legalization of abortion, the introduction of same sex civil unions, and a greater role for the local governments of voivodeships. They also differed on their foreign policy approach, with Trzaskowski supporting the further strengthening of relations with the European Union and Ukraine's membership in NATO, and Nawrocki opposing Ukraine's accession to NATO and being against the strengthening of relations with the EU. Both, however, ran on pro-Western platforms.
  
  Observers noted that a victory for Nawrocki would hurt Donald Tusk 's government, due the President's veto power, and the governing coalition not having seats in the Sejm to bypass it. The election result continued the trend of tighter electoral margins over the last 25 years becoming the closest in Polish history, and the streak of Law and Justice aligned presidential candidates winning presidential elections, with them only losing one out of five since its founding in 2001. The first round results showed a significant political strengthening for anti-establishment parties, with the Confederation Liberty and Independence (Mentzen), Confederation of the Polish Crown (Braun) and Razem (Zandberg) having their best results in history. Exit polls indicated that both candidates won nearly 50% of each age demographic, a change from older voters voting for the Law and Justice candidate and younger voters voting for Trzaskowski in the prior election. Anti-establishment parties gained the most of the youth vote; the far-right Sławomir Mentzen performed best among the youngest generation of Polish voters, with left-wing Adrian Zandberg coming second behind him among the youth.