Warsaw, Poland — Polish voters will vote Sunday to elect mayors in hundreds of cities and towns where no candidate won outright in the first round of the country’s local elections two weeks ago.
Mayors will be elected in a total of 748 localities, including the cities of Krakow, Poznań, Rzeszów and Wrocław. Those are places where no candidate won at least 50% of the vote during the first round of the April 7 election.
The local and regional elections are seen as a test for Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European Union government, four months after he took power at national level.
Tusk’s party did well in big cities, including Warsaw, where his party’s candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, easily won re-election as mayor two weeks ago.
However, Tusk did not achieve a decisive victory overall. The main opposition party, Law and Justice, which held power at the national level between 2015 and 2023, obtained a higher percentage of votes in provincial assemblies.
Tusk’s socially liberal Civic Coalition has strong support in the cities, while Law and Justice has a stronger base in conservative rural areas, particularly in eastern Poland.