On May 18, 2025, Poland held the first round of presidential elections. A total of 13 candidates were present on the ballot. The elections were conducted in a highly polarized environment and the topics of migration, Europe, security were central to the debates in the country, along with other topics such as social policy, economic policies…The campaign was also accompanied by scandals of corruption, connections of certain candidates with the criminal underworld, hypocrisy etc. Two candidates that collected most of the votes are Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw, with 31 % of the votes, and the conservative Karol Nawrocki, with 29 %.Trzaskowski was supported by the current government of Donald Tusk and the Civic Coalition political party (Koalicja Obywatelska) while Nawrocki got the support of the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) and the incumbent president Andrzej Duda. To many observers and commentators, the results of these elections represent yet another example of one of the biggest problems of the Polish political system: the so called duopol, the dominance, for more than 20 years, of the political sphere, by two big parties: the Civic Coalition and the Law and Justice parties, who are managing to somehow not only to attract most of the votes, but also to maintain and keep, over two decades already, a stable core of voters who ensure their predominance in Polish politics. To other observers, while this general picture is true overall, it also hides the fact that the elections also gave prominence to several other smaller political forces, both from the Right and the Left. Much of the competition between the two main political forces took place - in terms of policies and rhetoric - on the right wing of the political spectrum.Both main parties, PIS and Civic Platform, are engaged in a contest on who is pleasing more the voters on the right. In terms of migration policies, for example, the so-called “liberal” Civic Coalition proved to be more to the right, more xenophobic even, than PiS, especially when passed a series of anti immigrant laws, among which the most outrageous was the law on the suspension of asylum procedures.The youth showed in record numbers to the voting station, which could mean, on the one hand, that they want to dismantle the duopol of the two big parties. On the other hand, however, the youth were are casting, in these elections, a protest vote, aimed to punish both parties, but mostly KO, for not keeping their promises from the 2023 parliamentary elections on the legalization of abortion, on the accessibility of housing, on climate change, on Palestine and on other policies. A surprise in these elections is the emergence of a new Left, which, although small and fragile for now, has nevertheless the potential to grow into something bigger some day. For this episode, I sat down with three comrades that live and work in Poland, to comment on the results of the first round of the presidential elections. Agnieszka Wiśniewska, Former Editor-in-chief of KrytykaPolityczna.pl, Activist, feminist, journalist and political comentator. Claudia Ciobanu, a Polish correspondent for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) Teodor Ajder, editor and contributor for the migrant journal ”Mămăliga de Varșovia” (Mamalyga Warszawska).
