Our main story this week is of course the outcome of last Sunday’s first ballot in the Polish presidential election and where it leaves the race ahead of what will be the decisive second round run-off between Andrzej Duda and Rafał Trzaskowski on Sunday, July 12th.
The result of the first ballot was in line with an exit poll for private broadcaster TVN and indeed with opinion polls in the immediate run-up to the vote, albeit the final figures do show President Duda won slightly more support than in the exit poll which gave him 41.8% compared to 30.4% for Trzaskowski. The final official figures gave him 43.5% with Trzaskowski winning 30.46%, the independent Szymon Hołownia 13.87%, Konfederacja’s Krzysztof Bosak 6.78%, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz of the Polish People’s Party taking 2.36% and The Left’s Robert Biedroń 2.22%. In actual vote terms Duda won 8,450,513 votes to Trzaskowski’s 5,917,340.
The big question now is what this augurs for the decisive second ballot.
