The election will be a make-or-break moment for the government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The Polish presidential election will take place on May 18, parliamentary speaker Szymon Hołownia announced Wednesday, adding that if there is a need for a second round, that will take place on June 1.
The current president, Andrzej Duda, allied with the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party, will complete his second term this year on Aug. 6 and cannot legally run again.
May’s presidential election will be a make-or-break moment for Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. While the president’s role is somewhat symbolic, they can veto bills passed by parliament — an advantage Duda has used to effectively obstruct key legislation.
Polls suggest the election will be decided in a runoff vote between Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate for Tusk’s Civic Platform, and historian Karol Nawrocki, who has been nominated as PiS’s candidate despite not being a member of the party.
Nawrocki is currently trailing behind on 26.2 percent, with Trzaskowski being predicted 35.7 percent, according to a December poll from the Institute for Market and Social Research.
At the last presidential election in 2015, Duda went from being a virtual nobody on the backbenches of the European Parliament to defeating incumbent Bronisław Komorowski, who ran as an independent with the support of the Civic Platform.
