Who is Karol Nawrocki and could he become President of Poland?

In Poland, the list of presidential candidates has taken shape, and the election campaign is entering its final stretch. According to all forecasts, a second round of voting is expected, in which Rafal Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki are likely to face off. However, Slawomir Mentzen still has a slim chance of overtaking Nawrocki and making it into the runoff.

Trzaskowski is the candidate of the prime minister's Civic Coalition, Mentzen represents the far-right Confederation, while Nawrocki continues to position himself as an independent candidate. In reality, however, he is backed by the Law and Justice party (PiS). Still, Nawrocki has not yet managed to gain the expected level of support among the traditional electorate of Jaroslaw Kaczynski's party.

Read more about the candidate from Poland's main opposition party, Karol Nawrocki, and the specifics of his campaign in the article by Michal Kacewicz, a Bielsat journalist - Boxer, historian and Ukraine critic: does Karol Nawrocki have a chance to become President of Poland? According to PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Karol Nawrocki fully fits the image of an ideal presidential candidate. In 2024, Kaczynski said that the ideal candidate should be tall, well-built, fluent in English and have a family.

Nawrocki checks all these boxes. He was born into a working-class family, graduated from a university, obtained a PhD and became the head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. On paper, he seems like the perfect candidate.

His campaign is also well-run: dynamic, with strong engagement on social media. Nawrocki appeals to the traditional narratives of the Law and Justice party, accuses Donald Tusk's government of being anti-Polish, and emphasises his unwavering love for Poland. He has also claimed that Poland should align with Donald Trump's America, and continued to do so even when Trump criticised Europe and threatened to cut support for Ukraine.

As a PiS candidate, Nawrocki has repeatedly stirred growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment among Poles. Still, all this has not been enough. So far, Nawrocki has failed to win over the portion of the electorate that in recent years brought success to the right and to President Andrzej Duda.

People with little interest in politics often hold traditional values, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are far-right. And Nawrocki has yet to connect with these voters. The problem is that younger right-leaning voters associate Nawrocki with Jaroslaw Kaczynski and view him as outdated.

Slawomir Mentzen, on the other hand, comes across as a relatively new and unexpected figure. Interestingly, Karol Nawrocki is 42 years old - just three years older than Mentzen and nine years younger than Trzaskowski. Yet, he somehow comes across as the oldest of the three.

Nawrocki has chosen an interesting strategy to try to win back voters shifting toward Mentzen. He has avoided directly attacking his rival from the Confederation, seemingly counting on Mentzen's supporters in the second round. What's more, he often tries to outdo Mentzen, for example, in his anti-Ukrainian or anti-European rhetoric.

So far, the scandals involving Nawrocki don't appear to have significantly impacted his poll numbers. There remains a large group of undecided voters in Poland, and they may still be politically mobilised. Most likely, their final decision will be made after the televised debates, which are set to take place in the final phase of the presidential campaign.

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