Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s weekend presidential runoff election, according to the final vote count. Nawrocki wins 50.89% of votes in a very tight race against liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11%.
Nawrocki is a right-wing historian who has made Holocaust revisionism part of his campaign.
The close race had the country on edge since a first round two weeks earlier and through the night into Monday, revealing deep divisions in the country along the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union.
An early exit poll released Sunday evening suggested Trzaskowski was headed to victory before updated polling began to reverse the picture hours later.
The outcome indicates that Poland can be expected to take a more nationalist path under its new leader, who was backed by US President Donald Trump.
Nawrocki has most recently been the head of the Institute of National Remembrance, which embraces nationalist historical narratives, which glorified Polish victimhood and resistance to the Nazis while delegitimizing research on Polish antisemitism or Poles who killed Jews.
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