Poland’s presidential candidates seek to broaden appeal on campaign trail after nail-biting first round vote – Europe live | Poland
Morning opening: Changed priorities ahead
Jakub Krupa
Good morning from Poland, where the top two candidates in last night’s presidential elections – centrist Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski and radical-right historian Karol Nawrocki – wasted no time this morning before hitting the campaign trail again ahead of the run-off in two weeks’ time.
The final results, published this morning, put Trzaskowski marginally ahead at 31.36%, with Nawrocki at 29.54%.
Mayor of Warsaw and Civic Coalition (KO) candidate for the Polish presidential election, Rafal Trzaskowski (C) meets with local residents in Tarnobrzeg, Poland. Photograph: Piotr Polak/EPA
With both of them now having to broaden their appeal to get to 50%+1 on 1 June, we will inevitably some changing priorities in their campaigns.
There is plenty of votes to be won, but what makes it unusually tricky is that they could come from a very diverse – even diametrically opposed - group of candidates.
Devising an electoral strategy to get votes off Sławomir Mentzen, the libertarian anti-establishment candidate, who came third at 14.8% and radical right Grzegorz Braun (6.34%), while also securing the support of left-of-centre voters who backed Adrian Zandberg (4.86%) and Magdalena Biejat (4.23%) or centrist supporters of Szymon Hołownia (4.99%) could prove to be quite a challenge.
As Dr Ben Stanley told our Super Sunday blog last night, “candidate electorates are not Lego blocks” as he warned “those who are stacking them to project second round results are overlooking substantial heterogeneity.”
I will also bring you some European reactions to the votes in Romania and Portugal, and all other key updates from across Europe.
It’s Monday, 19 May 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
Good morning.
Key events
Simion eventually concedes defeat in Romania despite contesting exit polls
As part of Super Sunday, we also covered the Romanian election in detail, so here’s the latest report from Jon Henley.
It’s worth noting that despite exit polls showing pro-EU Nicușor Dan ahead, far-right leader George Simion, initially said he had won the election, but eventually conceded defeat to his rival, AFP noted.
“I would like to congratulate my opponent… He has won the election, and this was the will of the Romanian people,” he said in a video on Facebook.
“We may have lost a battle, but we will certainly not lose the war,” he later posted on X.
Portugal set for another minority government - analysis
Sam Jones
Portugal looks set for another minority government in the wake of last night’s snap general election, which saw the ruling, centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) of prime minister Luís Montenegro increase its seat count from 80 to 89 but still fall well short of a majority in the country’s 230-seat assembly.
The Socialist party (PS) appears to have squeaked into second place, but it suffered such a dire result – falling from 78 seats to 58 and picking up 23.4% of the vote – that itsleader, Pedro Nuno Santos, has announced his resignation.
Sunday proved a triumph for the far-right Chega party, which also took 58 seats but a slightly lower share of the vote (22.6%) to come in third – as things stand. Its share of the vote was well up from the 18% it won at the last election 14 months ago, and it picked up another eight seats.
But it’s worth remembering that the overseas votes have yet to be totted up – and they could conceivably upend the race for second place, allowing Chega to leapfrog the PS and become the biggest opposition party. So this is not over yet.
Despite once again failing to win a majority, Montenegro told a crowd of supporters early on Monday that he had received a clear and reinforced mandate from the Portuguese to govern.
“The people want this government and this prime minister,” he said.
Incumbent Prime Minister and leader of the center-right Social Democratic Party Luis Montenegro reacts with his supporters, following Portugal's general election, in Lisbon. Photograph: Armando França/AP
Montenegro added that the PS was apparently not inclined to negotiate any broad majority agreement, and that he was sticking to his promise of not doing any deals with Chega.
“Just let us work,” he said. “We all have to be able to speak to each other and put the national interest first.”
Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Souna, will meet party leaders this week to gauge who has the best chance of forming the new government.
Chega’s leader, the former football pundit André Ventura, called the result “historic” and said his party had “killed bipartisanship in Portugal”. He also said he believed his party would still finish second once the final count was in.
Leader of the right Party Chega (Enough) Andre Ventura speaks to supporters on the evening of legislative elections 2025 at Party's campaign headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal. Photograph: Tiago Petinga/EPA
But Chega is unlikely to get any closer to power as because of Montenegro’s longstanding veto on any pacts with Chega.
“Governing with Chega is impossible for three reasons,” Montenegro has previously said. “It isn’t reliable in its thinking; it behaves like a political weathervane, always changing its mind, and it’s not suited to the exercise of government.”
The small Liberal Initiative party – which could throw its weight behind Montenegro, bringing the AD around nine extra seats – has also categorically refused to do anything that would help Chega into power.
Nonetheless, far-right leaders, including Vox’s Santiago Abascal and Marine Le Pen of the National Rally, have offered Ventura their congratulations.
“I extend to my friend André Ventura my warmest congratulations for his tenacity, determination and commitment which have made it possible to build a powerful and popular patriotic movement,” said Le Pen.
Abascal said: “Patriotic and conservative forces are growing in all European nations despite the cordons sanitaires and the media hegemony of globalist parties. Congratulations to all of them, and especially to my dear friend André Ventura.”
Polish electoral campaign 'resetting' before run-off - analysis
Jakub Krupa
I have just had a chat with one of the best experts on Polish politics, Aleks Szczerbiak, professor of politics at the University of Sussex.
He offered some fascinating insight on into what we should expect over the next two weeks before the presidential runoff on 1 June.
A woman walks through an underground passage past a kiosk selling magazines with covers depicting presidential candidates for the 2025 Polish presidential election Rafał Trzaskowski (L) and Karol Nawrocki (R) in Warsaw. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images
What’s the state of play after the first round vote?
I think there’s absolutely everything to play for, it’s completely neck and neck, and in many ways the campaign is just kind of resetting.
It is a bit of a disappointing result for RafałTrzaskowski. I think he would have hoped for a larger lead. And also I think, looking further down the ticket, it will be disappointing for him that the candidates where he can obviously see people naturally switching towards him have underperformed, whereas candidates who, there’s no guarantee of this, but would probably be more likely to switch to KarolNawrocki, have either done as well as expected or slightly overperformed.
Looking at the results, which side do you think feels more comfortable this morning?
I would feel more comfortable as a Nawrocki staffer because my advice would be much more simple, which is turn this into a referendum on the government, tie Trzaskowski as closely as possible as you can to the government. And it’s as simple as that.
There are all kinds of different strands that pull together the people who voted for Mentzen, Braun, Zandberg, but the one thing that probably unites them all is that they’re not that keen on the government.
If the question is, ‘Do you or do you not like the Tusk government? Do you want to send a message? Do you want to create a political check within the political system on the government? If you don’t want that, vote for me, Nawrocki,’ it’s a very simple message, and it has the potential to cut through with lots of different kinds of voters.
What about Trzaskowski?
Trzaskowski ... hasn’t got that. The simple message for him would be, let’s finish the job that we did in 2023, essentially, it’s the final stage in terms of expunging Law and Justice from office. But I don’t think that’s enough to win, basically.
He has got to say something that is going to appeal to Mentzen’s supporters, but also get on side the people who are the government supporters and mobilise them as much as possible. He’s got to start talking about things like the moral, cultural issues, which get the left [vote], but it’s all much, much more difficult.
His pitch … throughout the campaign is that I am the person that can unite the Poles. The problem with that appeal is that he is clearly aligned with one side in the political dispute. Hołownia tried that – I’m the arbiter between the two sides – … and it just wasn’t credible. So I think that’s his problem.
I am also not sure you can build the majority around ‘vote for the moderate Trzaskowski against the extremist Nawrocki’ message. I don’t think voters are buying this thing that Nawrocki is an extremist. It doesn’t mean voters don’t have misgivings about Nawrocki – they clearly do – but the idea that, you know, he’s some kind of a radical, another sort of Grzegorz Braun type character, that’s not going to land.
I think Trzaskowski has got the more complicated job.
EU-UK deal expected today at first post-Brexit summit
Another big European story today is the EU-UK summit in London, starting in late morning, which is expected to pave the way for a post-Brexit reset between the two parties, including a new deal on a number of contentious issues.
Members of the media work ahead of the UK-EU Summit at Lancaster House, in central London. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/PA
The talks were taking place over the weekend ahead of a key summit in London hosted by Keir Starmer with EU leaders on Monday, which is aimed at resetting the UK’s relationship with the bloc five years after Brexit.
My political colleagues Peter Walker, Jessica Elgot and Lisa O’Carroll report that under the agreement, finalised just a few hours before a crunch summit in London, Brussels is understood to have dropped demands to link the duration of an agreement over food and agricultural goods with fishing rights.
According to EU sources, access to British fishing waters will be granted until the end of June 2038, an extension of 12 years. In return, the agreement on easier checks for food, animal and other agricultural products, known as sanitary and phytosanitary goods (SPS), is indefinite.
One element that is not expected to be finalised on Monday is the shape of any mutual youth mobility scheme, with arguments continuing about the UK’s insistence that the numbers coming in should be capped, which the EU opposes.
My colleague Andrew Sparrow is running the UK politics blog and will have all the key updates throughout the day here:
All votes counted in Poland
So, here are the official results in Poland after all votes were counted, with the top two candidates in bold going through to the run-off on 1 June.
Rafał Trzaskowski 31.36% Karol Nawrocki 29.54%
Sławomir Mentzen 14.8% Grzegorz Braun 6.34% Szymon Hołownia 4.99% Adrian Zandberg 4.86% Magdalena Biejat 4.23% Krzysztof Stanowski 1.24% Joanna Senyszyn 1.09% Marek Jakubiak 0.77% Artur Bartoszewicz 0.49% Maciej Maciak 0.19% Marek Woch 0.09%
Morning opening: Changed priorities ahead
Jakub Krupa
Good morning from Poland, where the top two candidates in last night’s presidential elections – centrist Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski and radical-right historian Karol Nawrocki – wasted no time this morning before hitting the campaign trail again ahead of the run-off in two weeks’ time.
The final results, published this morning, put Trzaskowski marginally ahead at 31.36%, with Nawrocki at 29.54%.
Mayor of Warsaw and Civic Coalition (KO) candidate for the Polish presidential election, Rafal Trzaskowski (C) meets with local residents in Tarnobrzeg, Poland. Photograph: Piotr Polak/EPA
With both of them now having to broaden their appeal to get to 50%+1 on 1 June, we will inevitably some changing priorities in their campaigns.
There is plenty of votes to be won, but what makes it unusually tricky is that they could come from a very diverse – even diametrically opposed - group of candidates.
Devising an electoral strategy to get votes off Sławomir Mentzen, the libertarian anti-establishment candidate, who came third at 14.8% and radical right Grzegorz Braun (6.34%), while also securing the support of left-of-centre voters who backed Adrian Zandberg (4.86%) and Magdalena Biejat (4.23%) or centrist supporters of Szymon Hołownia (4.99%) could prove to be quite a challenge.
As Dr Ben Stanley told our Super Sunday blog last night, “candidate electorates are not Lego blocks” as he warned “those who are stacking them to project second round results are overlooking substantial heterogeneity.”
I will also bring you some European reactions to the votes in Romania and Portugal, and all other key updates from across Europe.
It’s Monday, 19 May 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
