Poland’s knife-edge presidential race has become the latest battleground for the global populist right, with Donald Trump’s allies warning that defeat in Warsaw could sap Trumpist momentum across Europe after recent election losses to moderates in Romania and Canada.
At Poland’s first gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near its border with Ukraine, US and European conservatives said Sunday’s run-off vote for the presidency would be decisive not just for the EU but also for Maga’s drive to dominate Europe.
Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, urged voters in a speech at CPAC on Tuesday to elect Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, and described his pro-EU rival Rafał Trzaskowski as “an absolute train wreck of a leader”.
Donald Tusk, the liberal Polish prime minister elected at the head of a coalition in late 2023, needs Trzaskowski to become president so he can pursue the judicial overhaul and other reforms that are blocked by the outgoing PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda.
“Sunday’s vote is crucial for the future of Europe,” said George Simion, the Romanian ultranationalist who narrowly lost his country’s presidential race earlier this month despite a surge in support for the far right.
Simion warned that a loss in Poland could further diminish the influence of the populist right across central and eastern Europe and lead to defeat for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in next year’s parliamentary elections in Hungary. “If Maga really wants to go international, they need now a victory in Poland,” Simion told the Financial Times.
Latest opinion polls show that Nawrocki, a historian and a conservative nationalist, is running neck-and-neck with Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor representing Tusk’s centre-right Civic Platform party. The presidential election is also seen as a referendum on Tusk’s coalition government, which came to power after eight years of PiS rule.
Tusk has warned that a victory for Nawrocki would hurt Poland’s role in the EU and further stall the reforms promised two years ago, while the Trump camp is hoping to avoid a repeat of its defeat in Romania.
“If the loss in Romania is followed by a loss in Poland, it would be a big setback — and that is why the stakes are so high for this weekend’s election,” said Matthew Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, which organises the CPAC. “Viktor Orbán has been the linchpin for what we have been able to do in Europe, so of course he and his party and his values also need to continue to win.”
Poland’s CPAC was held next to the Rzeszów-Jasionka airport, which the US military helped turn into the major logistics hub for western military support to Ukraine after Russia’s all-out invasion in 2022. But the US announced in April that it would relocate troops from Jasionka to other bases in Poland, leaving Poland and other Nato allies to backfill the American presence around Jasionka.
During her address, Noem nevertheless suggested that a Trzaskowski presidency could weaken Poland’s border security and “take all of that protection away from you”.
In the latest sign of the Trump administration’s eagerness to intervene in European democracies, Brian Mast, Republican chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he had raised “serious concerns” in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over whether Brussels would guarantee “fair elections” in Poland.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the former Polish prime minister who led the PiS government until 2023, also warned against vote manipulation on Sunday. “We have to be ready for this government rigging the election and having to hold demonstrations in defence of the true results,” he said in an interview, though he provided no evidence to support his suspicions.
Morawiecki argued that Nawrocki’s election would serve as a necessary “counterweight” to Tusk, because Poland needs a president “capable of controlling the government”.
Nawrocki has sought to bolster his foreign policy credentials since briefly meeting Trump in the White House earlier this month, and has aligned himself with Trump and Poland’s far-right politicians by opposing Ukraine’s bid to join Nato.
Morawiecki contrasted Nawrocki’s access to Trump with what he described as strained ties between Tusk and the US president. “If Tusk says that he has a great relationship with Brussels — whatever that can bring Poland — let him have that and leave Washington for Nawrocki,” he said.
Political analysts are divided about the merits of Trump and his allies interfering in European politics. “Many of our politicians have learnt from Trump what can work on many levels, in terms of policies, campaign rhetoric and emotions, building up resentment against so-called liberal elites and of course that it’s OK to break rules or lie in public — as Trump does,” said Adam Leszczyński, director of the Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Political Thought, a government think-tank.
But Anna Wellisz, president of the US-based Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative public affairs institute, suggested that it was the EU that was the problem in Polish politics and that the election was about national sovereignty. A Nawrocki presidency, she said, would keep “a balance of power and give Poles more time to decide whether they really want leaders who just do what Brussels or Berlin think is best for Poland”.
Even if Nawrocki wins on Sunday, Tusk ruled out this week calling snap elections before those scheduled in 2027.
Despite facing several personal controversies, Nawrocki only lost by two percentage points to Trzaskowski the first round, when two-fifths of voters also selected other candidates. Far-right candidate Sławomir Mentzen came third in the first round with 14.8 per cent of the votes, and some of his supporters will probably switch to Nawrocki.
Morawiecki said Nawrocki’s campaign was inspired rather than modelled on Maga, but the PiS candidate shared Trump’s grassroots engagement and ability to brush off personal attacks. “He [Nawrocki] has been to almost every village, shook the hands of hundreds of thousands and I think the impact of him meeting so many people is still strongly underestimated,” said Morawiecki.
“Trump brings to Poland the hope that a candidate who speaks in mind can win,” said Stanisław Starnawski, a co-organiser of CPAC Poland.
CPAC speakers made historical references to Poland resisting foreign domination and presented Trump as a symbol of nationalist resurgence. Former PiS defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak drew an ambitious parallel, noting that the Polish national anthem mentions Napoleon as a model, “and now Donald Trump is a model when it comes to victory”, he said.
Still, Michał Kaminski, a Polish investor attending the conference, found cultural differences with the American political meetings he had previously attended. “I’m also seeing here that the internationalisation of the conservative movement isn’t that easy because ultimately it is very based on nationalism,” he said.
Although CPAC organisers had hoped to host US vice-president JD Vance, his absence was viewed by some participants as evidence of growing caution among US conservatives about engaging directly in foreign elections.
Vance and Elon Musk waded heavily into Germany’s parliamentary elections in February by supporting far-right politicians, but Hans-Georg Maassen, a German former intelligence chief, suggested Trump’s team had changed tack after rightwing candidates also lost elections in Canada and Australia, where they were blamed for aligning with Trump.
“[The Trump administration] made the mistake of playing a big part in the Canadian campaign and therefore they are really more reluctant to be here because they are not sure whether they can help or not,” Maassen said on the sidelines of CPAC.
Simion, on the other hand, said he could have benefited from stronger Trump support during his campaign. “I’m quite sure that President Trump is not now so interested in who will be the next president of Romania or Poland, but for us, having support from important figures of Maga is good for morale and a good sign that we are not as isolationist as we get presented in the mainstream media,” he said.
