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Poland election: Duda takes wafer-thin lead, exit poll indicates - live news Poland election: Duda takes wafer-thin lead, exit poll indicates - live news
(32 minutes later)
All the latest results and reaction from the presidential runoff between conservative incumbent and liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał TrzaskowskiAll the latest results and reaction from the presidential runoff between conservative incumbent and liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski
Piotr Buras and Pawel Zerka, of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), say in an instructive post-election note that Duda did not secure a clear victory despite “two weeks of a campaign in which he received massive support from the public media and launched brutal attacks against his contender”.
Trzaskowski, on the other hand, gained about 2 million voters compared to his result in the first round, they pointed out. The final result may depend on the votes cast by the Poles living abroad, who are not covered by exit polls, the analysts said, with the majority expected to support Trzaskowski.
Nonetheless, Buras and Zerka said the exit poll “still make Duda the favourite”, partly because the frst round exit poll underestimated his final result by considerably more than it did Trzaskowski’s.
Further, thy say, Poland lack of experience with postal voting on such a scale “could give plenty of room for manipulation on the one hand, and for conspiracy theories on the other hand. Irregularities during the postal voting might prove decisive.”
All this favours Duda, they feel, not just because he is slightly in the lead but because:
Here is the the Reuters news agency’s take on the evening so far:
Incumbent Andrzej Duda was marginally ahead in Poland’s presidential election on Sunday, an exit poll found, in a result seen as likely to have profound implications for Warsaw’s relations with the rest of the European Union.
The re-election of Duda, an ally of the ruling nationalists Law and Justice (PiS), is crucial if the government is to implement in full its conservative agenda, including judicial reforms that the European Union says are undemocratic.
Duda’s challenger, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, has pledged to repair Poland’s relations with Europe and use the presidential veto power to hold back any legislation that would subvert the rule of law.
The exit poll by Ipsos showed Duda winning 50.4% of the vote, while Trzaskowski, the preferred candidate of the main opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), had 49.6%. Ipsos said it was too early to call a winner.
“All we need is to count the votes. The night will be tense but I am certain that when the votes are counted, we will win,” Trzaskowski told supporters in a park just outside Warsaw’s historic Old Town.
Partial official results are expected on Monday.
Not everyone has finished voting. Holidaymakers in Split, Croatia, a popular destination for Poles, are still waiting to cast their ballots outside the consulate. Some have reportedly been queueing for five or six hours.
The Guardian’s Christian Davies warns that a result that is apparently this close could cause problems if it is contested:
More evidence that this is going to be a very, very close run election: overseas voter counts are starting to come in, led by the US whose Polish voters generally break heavily for conservative candidates. This time, however, it was rather tighter:
The Guardian’s Christian Davies wrote a fascinating piece this week profiling the two rival candidates, noting how - despite a few striking biographical similarities - each represents the face of a very different Poland:The Guardian’s Christian Davies wrote a fascinating piece this week profiling the two rival candidates, noting how - despite a few striking biographical similarities - each represents the face of a very different Poland:
Notes from Poland, the independent Polish news site, has more details from the exit poll.Notes from Poland, the independent Polish news site, has more details from the exit poll.
Geographically, it says voting followed the traditional Polish pattern, with the conservative east of the country plumping mainly for Duda and the more liberal west largely backing Trzaskowski.Geographically, it says voting followed the traditional Polish pattern, with the conservative east of the country plumping mainly for Duda and the more liberal west largely backing Trzaskowski.
Duda also did best among voters with a lower level of education and with older voters; Trzaskowski with younger and better-educated voters.Duda also did best among voters with a lower level of education and with older voters; Trzaskowski with younger and better-educated voters.
Here is Agence France-Presse’s first take on the wafer-thin lead the exit poll gives Duda:Here is Agence France-Presse’s first take on the wafer-thin lead the exit poll gives Duda:
At the Trzaskowski campaign’s post-election event, supporters of the liberal Warsaw mayor plainly feel their candidate is in with a chance, reports the Economist correspondent Annabelle Chapman.At the Trzaskowski campaign’s post-election event, supporters of the liberal Warsaw mayor plainly feel their candidate is in with a chance, reports the Economist correspondent Annabelle Chapman.
Trzaskowski himself says he still believes he can win: “We will wake up tomorrow in a completely new Poland,” he tells the crowd.Trzaskowski himself says he still believes he can win: “We will wake up tomorrow in a completely new Poland,” he tells the crowd.
Ben Stanley, an associate professor of politics at the SWPS University in Poland, reckons - with some justification - that it’s going to be a very long night.Ben Stanley, an associate professor of politics at the SWPS University in Poland, reckons - with some justification - that it’s going to be a very long night.
Both candidates have cause for cautious optimism, he points out:Both candidates have cause for cautious optimism, he points out:
The Guardian’s Christian Davies says the thing that struck him most forcefully outside polling stations was the influence of the conservative Duda’s anti-LGBT campaign - laced with homophobic rhetoric, it made the fight against so-called “LGBT ideology” one of the incumbent president’s main talking points:The Guardian’s Christian Davies says the thing that struck him most forcefully outside polling stations was the influence of the conservative Duda’s anti-LGBT campaign - laced with homophobic rhetoric, it made the fight against so-called “LGBT ideology” one of the incumbent president’s main talking points:
Stanley Bill, a senior lecturer at Cambridge university and expert observer of Polish culture and politics, confirms turnout was at a historic high for an election that could shape Poland’s future for many years to come:
With the race so close, the votes of Poles abroad could be crucial to deciding the outcome. Over 180,000 Poles in the UK registered for postal voting, and more than 150,000 of them had returned their ballots by Saturday.
In the first round, Poles in Britain voted 48.4% for Trzaskowski and just 15.5% for Duda, meaning if the race is as close as we expect, the strong support for Trzaskowski among Poles in Britain and elsewhere could prove decisive.
While in some countries, voting in person at consulates is possible, in Britain, only postal votes or voters delivered to the embassy by registered couriers were accepted
In the first round, there were reports of up to 15,000 voters not receiving their ballot packs in time to vote, and similar problems have been reported this time round. Given the potential tight margin of the vote, one group of Poles set up the impromptu citizen courier service to collect ballots from people who did not have time to post them, and courier them to the embassy on Sunday.
They hoped to have picked up 1,000 ballots by the end of the day.
The UK-based Polish journalist Jakub Krupa notes that with a margin this narrow, fewer than 150,000 votes separate the two candidates - meaning the final result could come down to the votes cast by the 180,000-plus Poles living in Britain ...
Poland’s conservative president, Andrzej Duda, holds a lead of less than one percentage point over his challenger, the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski, in the run-off round of the country’s presidential elections, according to an official exit poll.
The poll gave Duda, allied to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), 50.4% of the vote, compared to 49.6% for Trzaskowski, of the opposition Civic Platform (PO).
The final result is too close to call.
There Ipsos exit poll, expected in less than 10 minutes, is carried out for all three major Polish broadcasters: TVP, TVN and Polsat.
An updated late poll should follow at some tie between 11pm and midnight local time.
Here is Christian’s dispatch from earlier this afternoon from Otwock, a town of 35,000 inhabitants outside Warsaw where Duda won a plurality of votes in the first round.
The Guardian’s Christian Davies has been out and about at polling stations since they opened this morning.
He reports there was controversy after the country’s national emergency alert system, used to send text messages to everyone with a mobile phone registered in Poland, sent out a message encouraging older people to vote.
Observers and former election officials described the message as an attempt by the rulig PiS party to use state resources to get out its vote. Older voters, especially in small towns and rural areas, make up a large proportion of the party’s voter base and party officials had been concerned fear of the coronavirus may suppress turnout of its core vote.
“These alerts are not supposed to be used for sending this kind of information, but for warning people of approaching cataclysms,” Wojciech Hermeliński, a judge and former head of Poland’s electoral commission told liberal broadsheet Gazeta Wyborcza.
“The government sent this alert because they are trying to encourage a particular group to vote.”
Turnout in this neck-and-neck run-off looks like being very high - possibly the highest in any post-1989 election - which doubtless reflects strong feelings on both sides of the country’s deep political divide.
By 5pm local time 52.10% of registered voters had cast their ballots, well above the 47.89% at the same time during the first round on 28 June.
In the 2015 election, turnout at the same time was 40.51%.
Voting continues until 9pm local time and as expected, the race is nail-bitingly close. The only indication of a possible result we will have will be the exit poll, carried out by respected pollster Ipsos.
However, the poll’s margin of error is 2% - meaning a narrow margin of victory for either candidate could easily change as the night wears on.
In an interview published today by the Polish portal OKO.press, Paweł Predko of Ipsos admitted he was nervous about the close margins at play in today’s vote. He said he was particularly worried that the exit poll showing a narrow win for either candidate would lead people to assume the election was over, when actually things could change as the real votes are counted.
Although the exit poll has a large sample size of around 50,000, and is weighted to take multiple factors into account, around 10% of people generally refuse to say who they voted for, requiring the poll to be weighted for the assumption that fewer Duda than Trzaskowski voters are willing to speak to pollsters.
It also does not take into account votes by Poles abroad. However, Predko said he was confident that the poll would be accurate within the 2% margin of error.
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Poland’s presidential election runoff, a knife-edge contest whose outcome will determine the country’s trajectory for the foreseeable future.
It pits the incumbent, Andrzej Duda, allied to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), against liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski of the opposition Civic Platform (PO) - and most polls have the two separated by less than a percentage point.
Duda has has led a polarising campaign, promoting “family values” and attacking LGBT rights while promising to defend popular social welfare payments. A win for him would allow PiS to pursue controversial judicial and other reforms seen by many in the EU as eroding the rule of law and democratic backsliding.
While the role of president holds few executive powers, victory for Trzaskowski, who supports same-sex civil partnerships, could begin to loosen the PiS’s grip on Polish politics. He has promised to roll back the government’s legal reforms and would present a more liberal, pro-EU Polish face to the outside world.
While final official results are not expected until Monday morning, usually reliable exit polls should be released soon after polls close at 9pm local time.
We’ll be bringing you all the latest news as it happens, along with comment from the Guardian’s Christian Davies in Warsaw and central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker.