MNI POLITICAL RISK ANALYSIS - Poland Election Preview

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Executive Summary

• Poland’s neck-and-neck presidential race is down to the wire after centrist liberal Rafał Trzaskowski (KO) took an unconvincing lead in the first round.
• He is up against conservative Karol Nawrocki (de jure non-partisan, de facto supported by PiS) and the first round brought a surprisingly good result for right-wing candidates.
• This puts Trzaskowski in a difficult position, but his team is hoping that higher turnout might work to his advantage, while Nawrocki's campaign has suffered several setbacks lately.
• Poland will observe election silence starting at midnight from Friday into Saturday until polling stations in the country close at 20:00BST/21:00BST on Sunday.
• This is when exit polls will be published but the process of counting votes will likely extend into the morning. A razor-thin margin of victory for Trzaskowski carries an outside risk of a contested outcome.

This is a detailed update that follows up on our earlier preview released ahead of the first round of the election. In this report, we provide a briefing the broader political context, accounting for first-round results and major developments that occurred since then, we discuss the profiles of both remaining candidates, include a scenario analysis examining the probabilities and implications of possible outcomes, and attach the latest opinion polling and betting market data.