Sunday’s result from the first-round of voting in the Polish presidential election was not ideal for Rafal Trzaskowski, the centrist mayor of Warsaw, who has been the frontrunner throughout the campaign.
For months, he had consistently polled between 4% and 7% ahead of his closest rival, conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki, who is endorsed by Law and Justice (PiS), a nationalist party that governed Poland between 2015 and 2023.
But like Romanian voters last Sunday, Polish voters also delivered a result that surprised pollsters.
Mr Nawrocki, a 42-year-old historian, won 29.7% of votes and is now within touching distance of Mr Trzaskowski, who topped the…