Right-wing opposition candidate Nawrocki wins Polish presidential election
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I understand on paper how these right wing governments get into power. But I can't understand it at a fundamental level. How do people see a political party like that and think "yes this will help me be less poor. This will make the country better"?
Is it a lack of education? Hatred for what they do not understand? I just can't understand or relate to it. I don't understand how someone could come to these conclusions.
Everything you said but also disillusionment with the status quo and lack of an alternative vision for the future. It's not just that far-right politics are effective (though they certainly are), but that there's no competition, so so people with a faulty understanding of, well, everything (and a healthy dose of bigotry) assume it's either the right or establishment lizards they hate with every fibre of their beings.
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I understand on paper how these right wing governments get into power. But I can't understand it at a fundamental level. How do people see a political party like that and think "yes this will help me be less poor. This will make the country better"?
Is it a lack of education? Hatred for what they do not understand? I just can't understand or relate to it. I don't understand how someone could come to these conclusions.
because they found an enemy to rally people against, like that Austrian painter almost 100 years ago, this time it's brown immigrants that will be raping our women without consequences (because it would be apparently impossible to do something about this) and of course the UE will force you to house them, the same EU will evict you from your house if it won't be energy efficient, forbid you from riding your gas powered car because it's not green enough, it's what most of Nawrocki voters think Trzaskowski would let EU do to us, so they didn't voted for Nawrocki, they voted against Trzaskowski
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I understand on paper how these right wing governments get into power. But I can't understand it at a fundamental level. How do people see a political party like that and think "yes this will help me be less poor. This will make the country better"?
Is it a lack of education? Hatred for what they do not understand? I just can't understand or relate to it. I don't understand how someone could come to these conclusions.
For all the talk of how uneducated and stupid a PiS voter must be, it looks increasingly like it’s the KO voters that seem to be uneducated in matters of economy, which ultimately is the most important thing, and very easy to judge based on your own conditions.
PiS made people’s lives better. Their rule coincided with extremely prosperous time for Poland and it’s not a fluke. Contrast that with „Tusk’s green island” from the 2008 GFC times when I worked for 3.5PLN/h with no healthcare, no paid days off and no pension. Am I dumb to prefer PiS to KO? At least these guys have economists that are not economic flat-earthers like Balcerowicz.
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I understand on paper how these right wing governments get into power. But I can't understand it at a fundamental level. How do people see a political party like that and think "yes this will help me be less poor. This will make the country better"?
Is it a lack of education? Hatred for what they do not understand? I just can't understand or relate to it. I don't understand how someone could come to these conclusions.
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Everything you said but also disillusionment with the status quo and lack of an alternative vision for the future. It's not just that far-right politics are effective (though they certainly are), but that there's no competition, so so people with a faulty understanding of, well, everything (and a healthy dose of bigotry) assume it's either the right or establishment lizards they hate with every fibre of their beings.
What's the equivalent phrase in Polish for "Leopards ate my face"?
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That... Sucks. At the same time, it feels like what happened here in the US, a far right vs a centrist who leaned right during the campaign.
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Fascists combine socialist ideas with racism and nationalism
They really don't. They just steal some of our rhetoric
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For all the talk of how uneducated and stupid a PiS voter must be, it looks increasingly like it’s the KO voters that seem to be uneducated in matters of economy, which ultimately is the most important thing, and very easy to judge based on your own conditions.
PiS made people’s lives better. Their rule coincided with extremely prosperous time for Poland and it’s not a fluke. Contrast that with „Tusk’s green island” from the 2008 GFC times when I worked for 3.5PLN/h with no healthcare, no paid days off and no pension. Am I dumb to prefer PiS to KO? At least these guys have economists that are not economic flat-earthers like Balcerowicz.
Uh... I'm pretty sure there were reasons why the economy would be worse in 2008 than 2015 other than which party is in charge. Also by that logic PiS made people's lives worse because they were in charge when Covid hit.
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Uh... I'm pretty sure there were reasons why the economy would be worse in 2008 than 2015 other than which party is in charge. Also by that logic PiS made people's lives worse because they were in charge when Covid hit.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]PiS went through two different crises (pandemic, 2nd invasion of Ukraine) and did much better comparatively. Poland was barely touched by 2008 GFC and was lauded as island of economic growth but it was much worse time to live through because KO chose austerity rather than an actual state intervention. If we did what KO was calling for during the pandemic (rising interest rates to stem broken supply chain inflation shock) we’d be much worse.
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Fascists combine socialist ideas with racism and nationalism
They really don't. They just steal some of our rhetoric
Let's not forget the NSDAP. This is scarcely news.
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Let's not forget the NSDAP. This is scarcely news.
The nazis famously sent unionizers and socialists to the camps. They even started an anti communist pact.
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Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.
Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.
The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.
Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.
Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.
Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.
The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.
Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.
Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.
“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”
Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.
Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.
“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.
The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.
However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.
An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda
Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.
The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.
Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.
Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.
Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.
Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.
During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.
Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.
Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.
The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.
Let's not pretend Tusk did much for the average Pole. This is merely another example of leaders talking about the importance of democracy while things go to shit at the ground level.
I have another example, but it trumps this.
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So ... How likely is it that Russia fiddled with the election?
Also, fuck
It's eastern Poland tilting the scales to the far-right, despite all the nationalistic talk they are still pretty russified.
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The nazis famously sent unionizers and socialists to the camps. They even started an anti communist pact.
Of course the whole thing was a sham. But it is important to see what's happening now in the states through that lens.
None of my classmates had anything good to say in Germany about ... well, anything from that era. In fact, anyone who did was ostracized.
I fear this is where we're headed.
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I understand on paper how these right wing governments get into power. But I can't understand it at a fundamental level. How do people see a political party like that and think "yes this will help me be less poor. This will make the country better"?
Is it a lack of education? Hatred for what they do not understand? I just can't understand or relate to it. I don't understand how someone could come to these conclusions.
I do think some of the blame has to lie on the centrist candidates who legitimize the grievances of the far-right by pandering to them, instead of calling out their lies and collaborating with the left. Seems to be a global trend of centrists preferring to try and capture the vote of the mythical right-wing moderate.
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Let's not pretend Tusk did much for the average Pole. This is merely another example of leaders talking about the importance of democracy while things go to shit at the ground level.
I have another example, but it trumps this.
It's an effect of coordinated lobbying by think tanks established worldwide by the same people who trump this.
Not a coincidence that the Spanish far-right party leader shared a photo of himself meeting the Polish far-right party leader at the CPAC in USA earlier this year.
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It's an effect of coordinated lobbying by think tanks established worldwide by the same people who trump this.
Not a coincidence that the Spanish far-right party leader shared a photo of himself meeting the Polish far-right party leader at the CPAC in USA earlier this year.
CPAC: Where you go if you want to spew vitriol.
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Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.
Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.
The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.
Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.
Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.
Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.
The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.
Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.
Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.
“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”
Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.
Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.
“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.
The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.
However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.
An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda
Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.
The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.
Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.
Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.
Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.
Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.
During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.
Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.
Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.
The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.
Will he immediately surrender to Putin?
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Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.
Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.
The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.
Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.
Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.
Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.
The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.
Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.
Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.
“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”
Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.
Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.
“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.
The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.
However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.
An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda
Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.
The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.
Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.
Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.
Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.
Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.
During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.
Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.
Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.
The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.
Wow. That sure does blow. Anyone endorsed by the shithead currently running the US into the ground is a guaranteed PoS. Very suspicious how she was behind on all polls like that then wins.... Very very sus.
Buckle up Poland! Get ready for a horrible time. 🫤
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Historically, that loop eventually pushes all forms of inequality to a local maxima, and then a war breaks out and inequality drops.
We could do it without the war part, but we won't. Maybe one day...
