Poland’s embattled Prime Minister Donald Tusk emerged bruised but still standing after his government survived a parliamentary vote of confidence on 11 June. He’d called the vote, which he won by 243 to 210, just days after the presidential candidate of his Civic Platform (PO) party suffered an unexpected defeat.

Karol Nawrocki, an independent nationalist conservative backed by the former ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) defeated liberal pro-European Union (EU) Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski in a nail-biting presidential runoff. The result offers a broader test of Poland’s democratic resilience that could have implications across the EU.

The electoral blow

Nawrocki’s path to victory was anything but predictable. The 42-year-old former president of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance had never held elected office before emerging as PiS’s chosen candidate. Yet his populist message resonated with frustrated voters.

Economic grievances provided fertile ground for nationalist appeals. Despite Poland’s relatively low unemployment, youth unemployment of over 10 per cent is an understandable source of anxiety for younger voters. Increasingly, they’re responding by rejecting mainstream political offerings.

This was reflected in the fragmented results of the 18 May first round, which signalled trouble for the political establishment. Trzaskowski won only 31.36 per cent of the vote while Nawrocki took 29.54 per cent. The combined vote share of right-wing candidates – Nawrocki and far-right politicians Grzegorz Braun and Sławomir Mentzen – exceeded polling expectations. Braun and Mentzen took over 21 per cent of the vote between them, thanks to the support of many young voters.

The 1 June runoff saw Nawrocki win 50.89 per cent to Trzaskowski’s 49.11 per cent, a margin of under two percentage points. Nawrocki took 64 per cent of the rural vote while Trzaskowski commanded 67 per cent in urban centres – an established geographic divide that reflects an enduring ideological division between a conservative, nationalist Poland and its liberal, cosmopolitan counterpart.

Election interference

The election campaign unfolded against a backdrop of concerns about foreign interference that echoed troubling developments across the region – particularly in Romania, where the Supreme Court cancelled the 2024 presidential election due to evidence of Russian interference.

Anticipating similar threats, Polish officials introduced enhanced monitoring. Months before the election, they announced a cybersecurity programme, Election Umbrella, to counter disinformation, including by allowing people to report it through an online platform. However, PiS rejected this as an attempt at ‘internet censorship’ and launched a Trump-style counter-campaign called the Election Protection Movement to stop the PO ‘stealing’ the election.

Just days before the first round, Poland’s Research and Academic Computer Network discovered evidence of potentially foreign-funded Facebook ads targeting all major candidates – an allegation quickly denied by a spokesperson from Facebook’s parent company Meta.

According to an investigation by fact-checking organisation Demagog, TikTok was flooded with disinformation, particularly but not exclusively against Trzaskowski. The platform’s algorithm displayed far-right content twice as often as centrist or left-wing content to new users, with pro-Nawrocki videos appearing four times more frequently than pro-Trzaskowski content. Over 1,200 fake accounts systematically attacked Trzaskowski, while another 1,200 promoted Nawrocki, with many new suspicious accounts appearing just before voting day.

The influence operation extended beyond individual character assassination to sowing distrust in the democratic process and sharing broader far-right narratives. Demagog’s investigation found at least 23 videos containing election fraud disinformation, with 4.3 million views, close to 80 per cent of which lacked the proper election information labels TikTok had promised to provide. Fake accounts systematically promoted anti-Ukrainian sentiment and anti-immigration conspiracy theories: they questioned Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign state and spread unfounded claims about Germany secretly facilitating illegal migration to Poland.

Just before the first-round vote, the Digital Affairs Minister warned of Russia’s ‘unprecedented attempt to interfere’ in the election, with the National Cybersecurity Institute reporting that suspicious accounts had spent more than any election committee in the campaign’s last days. Tusk revealed that a group of Russian hackers operating on Telegram had attacked the PO’s website and those of the agrarian and Left parties.

Institutional paralysis

Trzaskowski’s defeat prompted speculation about Tusk’s political future and the viability of his ideologically diverse coalition. Formed in 2018 as a broad opposition coalition to challenge PiS, the Civic Coalition brings together parties spanning from centre-left to centre-right, along with the Greens and Modern parties and regional groups, with the PO as its dominant party. United by a shared commitment to liberal democracy and EU membership, it defeated the PiS government in the 2023 parliamentary election.

With critics in the Civic Coalition blaming the election defeat on the government’s communication failures and Tusk’s personal unpopularity, the confidence vote became a key test. Having survived the immediate crisis, Tusk now faces the task of rebuilding momentum before Nawrocki takes office in August. His plans include appointing a ‘heavyweight’ spokesperson to overhaul communications and conducting a ministerial reshuffle.

But implementing the reforms needed to restore the democratic institutions that came under strain during the PiS administration will be a tall order. In eight years in power, PiS dismantled judicial independence, made public media its propaganda mouthpiece and undermined women’s rights by introducing one of Europe’s harshest anti-abortion laws. The new government’s attempts to reckon with this legacy have been hampered by outgoing President Andrzej Duda, who has been able to use his veto power to block key reforms. Nawrocki will mean more of the same.

With Nawrocki in office, Tusk will remain unable to realise his promises to Polish voters and the EU, including depoliticising the judiciary, liberalising abortion laws and passing civil partnership legislation for same-sex couples. Nawrocki’s aggressively traditionalist and nationalist stances threaten to create a hostile environment for human rights, particularly minority rights and gender rights activists and organisations. These groups may once again face accusations of advancing foreign or EU-backed agendas, as they did under PiS rule.

International ramifications

The election result has also sent ripples across both sides of the Atlantic. Donald Trump gave Nawrocki an unprecedented level of support: he received him at the White House just before the election and sent his Homeland Security Secretary to campaign for him in Poland as she attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). This year, CPAC, a US conservative platform, held two international events, in Hungary and Poland. The Polish one, timed to coincide with the runoff vote, offered a clear indication of how the nationalist far right has become internationalised.

While Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – a guest of honour at CPAC – celebrated Nawrocki’s ‘fantastic victory’, EU officials have maintained diplomatic silence on its serious implications for Poland’s role in the 27-country bloc. The European Commission had counted on Tusk completing promised judicial reforms as it unlocked billions in pandemic recovery funds frozen over rule-of-law concerns during PiS rule. With progress now unlikely, the Commission faces the difficult decision of whether to maintain its funding even if the government’s unable to deliver promised changes.

Beyond the EU, Nawrocki’s foreign policy positions threaten to complicate Poland’s previously staunch backing of Ukraine. Although supportive of continued aid, Nawrocki has pledged to block any prospects of Ukraine joining NATO and prioritise Polish interests over refugee support. His foreign policy approach emphasises Polish sovereignty and national pride, potentially straining relationships with neighbouring countries as he intensifies historical narratives about past grievances, all while offering unconditional support to the Trump administration.

High stakes

The razor-thin margin of victory in the presidential election, combined with record turnout of 72.8 per cent, tells a complex story of a divided society. While high participation suggests robust civic engagement, the deep polarisation reflected in the results reveals faultlines that extend far beyond conventional political disagreements. The geographic and generational divides that shaped this election mirror tensions playing out across democratic societies worldwide, as does the role played by foreign interference, disinformation and social media manipulation. The fact that many young people embraced extreme candidates should be concerning: it used to be a source of hope that Poland’s young people could be assumed to have more progressive views than previous generations, but this election challenges that assumption.

The outcome offers further evidence that, when economic grievances aren’t addressed, institutional trust is allowed to erode and information environments are left vulnerable to manipulation, opportunistic politicians will try to exploit social divisions and anti-establishment anger.

For Poland, the coming years will test whether democratic institutions can withstand the pressures of sustained political deadlock. With Nawrocki wielding veto power over Tusk’s reform agenda, Poland faces potential institutional paralysis that could further erode public trust in democratic governance. Poland’s institutions will need to try to demonstrate their continuing effectiveness, and civil society and independent media will need to maintain their credibility, to help protect and nurture democratic values.

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