The first round of Poland’s presidential election on May 18 has redrawn the political map in some unpredictable and disquieting ways. Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and candidate of the Civic Coalition, finished narrowly ahead of Karol Nawrocki, the conservative candidate supported by the Law and Justice party (PiS), which in 2023 was ousted from government after eight years in power. The final result was 31.3% to 29.5%.
Despite a small lead, Trzaskowski faces a steep and uncertain path to victory in the second round, to be fought by the top two candidates on June 1. The key battleground lies not only among the undecided center but more crucially among the younger, right-leaning voters who delivered a remarkable third-place finish to Sławomir Mentzen, marking a decisive turn in Poland’s evolving political landscape.
Mentzen, a tax adviser-turned-brewer, crypto-bro, and co-leader of the far-right Confederation party, took an impressive 15% of the vote. This performance, while not entirely unexpected, marks a watershed moment.
Confederation’s steady rise since roughly 2018, fueled by social media fluency, libertarian aesthetics, and nationalist themes, has culminated in a generational breakthrough. Mentzen’s appeal to disenfranchised young voters, particularly men, has been strategic and effective. He offered a blend of free market rhetoric, anti-establishment messaging, and cultural grievance. This turned out to be a cocktail particularly potent in a country still negotiating the post-1989 contract.
What goes underappreciated, however, is that Mentzen’s success is owed in large part to Krzysztof Bosak, who plays an equally pivotal role within the Confederation. Unlike Mentzen’s informal tone, Bosak maintains a classically conservative demeanor: polished, ideologically rigid, and increasingly respected on the international stage.
As deputy speaker of the Sejm, Bosak has leveraged his institutional position to gain diplomatic legitimacy, meeting parliamentarians from countries across Europe and speaking at conferences that cast him as a mainstream defender of traditional values. These engagements, which are increasingly visible and carefully curated, signal his ambitions to move from the fringes to the core of conservative leadership in Poland and beyond.
Nawrocki and his backers in the PiS party will hope that Mentzen’s strong showing will translate into a significant consolidation of the right in the second round. Most of his voters are expected to swing toward Nawrocki, which makes Trzaskowski’s challenge formidable. To stand a chance, Trzaskowski, Warsaw’s liberal mayor, must draw not only the scattered liberal vote but also fracture the youthful right, persuading at least some of Mentzen’s supporters that the stakes extend beyond ideological alignment and involve the very question of democratic rule.
This task is further complicated by the left’s continuing inability to unify. Despite a moment of opportunity, its three candidates collectively scored only around 11%. The left’s lead figure, Adrian Zandberg, came in a distant fourth, underlining the persistent failure of progressive forces to build a coherent front.
Equally surprising — if not outright disastrous — was the result for the center-left and its candidate Szymon Hołownia, the centrist leader of the Polska 2050 movement and current Marshal of the Sejm. Despite being a key coalition partner in Donald Tusk’s 2023 government, Hołownia’s campaign faltered spectacularly, performing well below expectations.
This humiliating performance places him in an extremely precarious political position. Should Trzaskowski win, Tusk is likely to quietly consolidate control, gradually sidelining Hołownia while avoiding an open rupture. Hołownia’s poor result will weaken his leverage, but a calculated integration — rather than a purge — may serve the coalition better. If Trzaskowski loses, however, Hołownia’s movement may barely survive the post-election fallout, fractured and delegitimized as it now is.
Yet the most alarming outcome of the first round is not electoral math — it is the re-emergence of political extremism in its rawest form. Grzegorz Braun, long relegated to the margins of the extreme right, secured over 6% of the national vote. Openly antisemitic, anti-Ukrainian, pro-Russian, and radically anti-EU, Braun has long struggled to gain traction, even within Poland’s nationalist spectrum.
But something has shifted. His visibility surged after several notorious public outbursts: interrupting parliamentary proceedings with incendiary historical revisionism, calling for the “de-Judaization” of Polish public life, while becoming the only Polish MP to vote against Finland’s accession to NATO. These gestures, once seen as theatrical extremism, have found a new and disturbing resonance.
Braun’s result is not just a domestic issue. It is, whether by design or not, a clear win for the Kremlin. Political enemies suggest his ties to Russia are deeply troubling, but regardless, his growing legitimacy serves Moscow’s aims. His electoral success introduces a long-term challenge that the Polish state will now have to confront seriously: how to contain and counteract a movement that fuses digital-age radicalism with authoritarian nostalgia.
The fact that nearly one in 16 Polish voters endorsed a man who blames Ukraine for the war, denies the Holocaust, and sees the EU as a satanic project reveals a deeper undercurrent of societal alienation and susceptibility to conspiracy. Some of Braun’s supporters may feel anti-establishment fatigue and see him as a useful protest vote. But for many others, his vision — however incoherent — represents a form of cultural and geopolitical revanchism.
Poland’s presidential race is no longer simply a contest between right and center-left. The second round on June 1 will decide more than who holds the presidency. It will measure whether Polish democracy can still hold its institutional line against the pull of radicalization and fragmentation — key issues for European NATO, where Poland is a key defense player, and for the EU. What remains to be seen is whether the institutions of the republic, and the electorate at large, will draw a clear line between principled conservatism and the abyss that lies beyond.
Maciej Filip Bukowski is the Head of the Energy and Resilience Program at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in Warsaw, a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and a Research Fellow at the Earth System Governance Project. His upcoming PhD thesis examines the geoeconomics of clean tech policies in great power rivalry between the EU, the US and China.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
