As we are getting ready for presidential election here in USA, Poland is about to choose a new president as well. The 2020 Polish presidential election was due to be held on May 10th 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The election (wybory) was initially scheduled for May, when President Duda had a commanding lead in the polls and was expected to win easily. PiS leaders wanted to push ahead with a postal vote despite the pandemic, but the vote was postponed at the last minute.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Since then, an economic downturn linked to the pandemic (pandemia) has set in and liberal party Civic Platform replaced its largely ineffectual candidate with Trzaskowski, narrowing the race.

The election was moved to June 28th. In Sunday’s presidential election (wybory prezydenckie) Andrzej Duda won the most votes, but fell short of the 50% he needed to win without a second round of voting.

The results mean Duda and Trzaskowski will go head to head (łeb w łeb) in a second round (druga runda) on July 12th, in a vote that will determine Poland’s political future (polityczna przyszłość Polski). Polls before Sunday’s vote suggested a runoff between the two candidates would be too close to call.

Independent candidate Szymon Hołownia was in third place, while the far-right nationalist Krzysztof Bosak was in fourth.

Turnout was estimated at 63%, well up from the 49% turnout in the last presidential elections in 2015, in a sign of how the polarization (polaryzacja) of the last five years has mobilized voters on both sides of the divide. People were mostly voting in person, although they were required to wear masks at polling stations.

I’m sure people in Poland are eager to see what the next round will bring and who is going to win! Any guesses from our readers???