Warsaw seems to revolve entirely around the Palace of Culture, the enormous building that Poles have gradually surrounded with ever taller skyscrapers in an attempt to hide Stalin’s unwelcome gift to the city. It can’t be hidden, moved, or torn down: the Pałac Kultury i Nauki is like a magnet for Warsaw. So in recent years, this unwelcome gift towering over everything has become a screen for projecting messages and, depending on the occasion, lights up in different colors. It has been blue like the European flag, light blue and yellow like Ukraine’s colors, and often white and red, like the Polish flag. On June 1st, the day of the Polish presidential elections, the Palace of Culture was completely red. Projected onto it was the image of a house containing the European stars embracing Poland. From the chimney of this house of Euro-Polish coexistence, no smoke rose—only hearts floated up. It’s true that cities feel history. And Warsaw, where 67 percent of voters backed its mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, started to become shrouded in fog just before the results began to show a lead for the nationalist candidate Karol Nawrocki. The fog concentrated around the skyscrapers, and descending from the tip of the Palace, it began to erase first the hearts, then the roof of the euro-Polish house that Trzaskowski, or someone on his team, had projected – perhaps as a sign of good luck. But that’s not how it went. The mayor of Warsaw lost. The reformist ambitions of Donald Tusk’s government are now at serious risk. How do you lose a foreseen vote on which the entire future of a power-ambitious nation depended? This is a defeat that deserves dissection, as it hides within it a story of radically different candidates, underestimations, improvisation, necklaces, wafers, potatoes, and nicotine.
Rafal, You Again?
You don’t run again if you’ve already lost – and it’s painful to say, but Rafal Trzaskowski missed his chance to become president of the country five years ago, when he lost to the incumbent head of state, Andrzej Duda. At the time, it was said that despite the defeat, the opposition had finally found a new leader who managed to energize and inspire both the political center and the sparse left. But five years is a long time. Between 2020 and 2025, the young mayor seemed to age overnight, especially since PiS, in a clever move, decided to run someone just over forty against him. Five years is a political lifetime – there was a pandemic, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Donald Trump returned to the world stage. Perhaps Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski had already sensed that the favorable wind blowing for Trzaskowski had died down, and that’s why he decided to challenge the mayor in the party primaries. For Civic Coalition (Ko), the primaries weren’t a particularly serious affair, and Ko leader Donald Tusk had already made up his mind about who should run for the highest office in the state. There are two versions of how that decision came about: one speaks of a promise, the other of a desire for control. Let’s start with the first: when Civic Coalition managed to form a government in 2023 and Tusk became prime minister, it seemed that Trzaskowski was waiting for his moment – perhaps expecting it already that same year. But that victory bore Tusk’s signature, and the prime ministership rightly belonged to him. So the mayor had to wait again for the presidential elections, and hopefully made a fateful promise to his wife Malgorzata: you’ll become pierwsza dama, First Lady. The second version is more cynical: Tusk preferred a calm and predictable man like Trzaskowski as president – perhaps more interested in the position than in policy – rather than the unpredictable Sikorski, who had stronger political instincts, an agenda, and a hunger for visibility.
Karol Who?
When PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski decided that his candidate would be a historian named Karol Nawrocki, the name quickly became one of the most searched terms by Poles online. No one knew who he was. Many believed Kaczynski had run out of ideas, and rumors spread that the aging leader was done for. But in reality, he may have been looking precisely for an unknown figure to oppose the well-known Trzaskowski. Nawrocki was perfect in many ways: he was younger, didn’t come from a wealthy family of artists like the Warsaw mayor, and had a background as a streetwise kid who knew football chants and could rile up angry Poland. He grew up in the working-class district of Gdańsk, with a father who was a lathe operator and a member of the Solidarity trade union. Kaczynski understood that the battle would be fought entirely on the right – against the so-called anti-system party Konfederacja, whose base harbors more resentment toward PiS than toward the Civic Coalition. The unknown Nawrocki, emerging from obscurity, could cultivate the myth of the anti-establishment figure coming to fix his party’s mistakes. The new president played the role to perfection, distancing himself from the long years PiS had spent in government and the presidency. To shape his public persona, a compelling family story was also needed – one that could appeal to women voters, who traditionally vote against PiS. Nawrocki had just that: his wife Marta became a mother at sixteen, he met her later, married her, and adopted her son Daniel, who actively participated in the campaign. Daniel shared how Nawrocki had entered his life and made it better.
The boring, over-70 Kaczynski – ignoring party promises – took a gamble, and once again proved to be a reliable barometer of Polish society.
A Lazy Campaign
After the results, the news portal Onet published behind-the-scenes insights that revealed how Rafal Trzaskowski’s team underestimated their opponent. Already in the spring, the Warsaw mayor had data showing that the favorable wind was weakening. That would have been the moment to launch a sweeping campaign, move from the big cities to rural areas, devise a strategy for smaller towns, and take the risk of breaking through in the six southeastern regions of Poland that traditionally vote en masse for PiS. Instead, Trzaskowski’s team, despite the data, didn’t change their strategy. They ignored the signs, made no real effort to flip the PiS strongholds, and focused on negative material about Nawrocki from media investigations. It was a lazy campaign, while the opponent proceeded slowly, took time to be known – unhurried but with greater financial investment.
From Passion to Boredom
Every era has its communication genius – and few geniuses work for all times. To win in 2023, Donald Tusk relied on Wioletta Paprocka-Slusarska. A millennial and former handball player, she introduced the heart in Polish colors as the symbol of Civic Coalition. Tusk praised her publicly from the victory stage. Trzaskowski wanted her for his campaign too. But Paprocka-Slusarska stuck with the same messages from 2023. Trzaskowski lacks Tusk’s communication flair, and what had once been a powerful movement now felt sluggish, tired, and lacking reach. Nawrocki took the opposite approach. Around him, he built a dynamic team led by 38-year-old Pawel Szefernaker. Not a communications expert, but a politician. The first thing he did with Nawrocki was take him to a tailor to get suits fit for a presidential candidate. He turned the campaign around – and seems to be the one who suggested the “snus moment” strategy.
Sniffing Live
During the final debate between the two candidates, cameras caught Karol Nawrocki covering part of his face with one hand while bringing something to his nose with the other. Polish media debated for days whether the act was intentional or accidental, but the opposition obsessively focused on the “sniff”. In the final days of the campaign, that image was everywhere – Nawrocki seemingly sniffing live on TV. Nawrocki explained he wasn’t sniffing drugs but using snus, oral tobacco: necessary to stay awake during the boring debate with his rival. The outrage kept building. Everything revolved around Nawrocki’s gesture. So much so that he took a drug test to prove he was clean – and challenged Trzaskowski to do the same. When Trzaskowski refused, rumors swirled about the mayor’s “decadent lifestyle”, with allegations that he used cocaine to keep up with his social calendar. The more Trzaskowski’s team harped on the TV sniff, the more snus sales went up, and Nawrocki accused his rivals of classism for condemning a tobacco habit popular among working-class Poles.
Class Struggle and a Classy Man
One nickname Nawrocki’s team gave to the Warsaw mayor was “Bazur” – a Polish-style spelling of Bonjour, the French word for “good morning”. Trzaskowski is a polyglot who studied abroad. What used to be seen as merit in a politician, in this nationalist vs. globalist campaign, became a liability. Throughout the debates, the main topics were migration, the economy, and green policies. Trzaskowski, the globalist, was accused of not understanding “ordinary people”, the group Nawrocki claims as his own. Though he came from humble beginnings, Nawrocki is no longer one of the people: he was appointed director of the National Institute of Remembrance and lives far from the working class. But he skillfully leveraged his past and spun every scandal into proof of his connection to the people. He was once a boxer – previously using that skill in hooligan brawls for Lechia Gdansk fans. Now, boxing is a fitness routine and a symbol of his ability to protect himself. Accused of procuring prostitutes for guests of the Grand Hotel in Sopot? He shifted focus to the fact that he had worked as a doorman – a regular job his rival never had. Trzaskowski’s campaign chased after the scandals, but never pressed hard enough on Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications.
Wafers, Potatoes, and Corals
Prince Polo (pronounced “prinze polo”) is a wafer brand popular in Poland since the 1950s. Every Pole links it to childhood memories. At one rally, Trzaskowski showed up holding one of the gold-wrapped bars to talk about Polish exports. Prince Polo is also beloved in Iceland – so much so it even inspired a song. Today it’s made by Mondelez International, and Trzaskowski cited it as an example of Polish success abroad. He aimed to tap into a nostalgic, unifying symbol of popular culture – but the attempt came off as awkward and contrived. Near the campaign’s end, two other symbols entered the picture: potatoes and red coral beads. MP Kinga Gajewska visited a nursing home wearing a Trzaskowski campaign shirt and filmed herself handing an elderly man a sack of potatoes. The opposition slammed the gesture as “classist”. She claimed she also brought vegetables and meat, but by then everyone remembered the sack of potatoes. The final blow came from Joanna Senyszyn, a left-wing feminist icon. During a debate, she took off her signature red bead necklace and handed it to Malgorzata, Trzaskowski’s wife, as a symbol of women’s independence and strength. This triggered a trend of red bead necklaces among party supporters – but no one from Trzaskowski’s team seemed to realize that the gesture risked reinforcing the image of a candidate out of touch with rural Poland.
Poland, the EU, and the World
After the presidential results, the Polish government led by Donald Tusk finds itself hamstrung. The reformist agenda aimed at bringing Poland back in line with rule-of-law standards will be blocked by the new president—just as it was by the outgoing one. Nawrocki’s job will be to break the governing majority, push for early elections, and sabotage the relationship between Brussels and Warsaw. He is an isolationist. He believes Poland’s support for Ukraine has gone too far and thinks the country should prioritize itself. He’s applied the Trumpist agenda to Polish needs. But what happens if Poland exits the coalition of the willing? If the Weimar Triangle collapses? If the EU’s largest army withdraws from its eastern leadership role? The risk is not just national – it’s a threat to the security of the entire European Union.
The Snap and the Thud
In 2020, when Trzaskowski ran against Andrzej Duda, he narrowly lost. In 2025, he improved his result – but not enough. Before the vote, PM Tusk jokingly commented on the opposition’s revival of the old tale of Poland being subjugated to Germany because of “globalists.” He posted on X: “The name Trzaskowski will twist German tongues. For any true patriot, the choice is clear”. It would twist tongues across Europe, Italians included. Five years ago, Poles began calling the mayor “Trzask” – not just as an abbreviation, but also because trzask means “crack” or “snap,” and he seemed like the snap of awakening. But trzask also means “thud.” On June 2nd, when Gazeta Wyborcza hit the newsstands, its front-page headline read: Trzask Polski. The meaning could go either way. The paper led with early exit polls showing Trzaskowski ahead. But within a couple of hours, the snap became a thud.
