Exit poll: Andrzej Duda wins presidential election
PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp
24.05.2015 22:31
Law and Justice candidate Andrzej Duda has won the second round of the presidential election in Poland, gaining 53 percent, according to an exit poll released by Ipsos at 10.30pm.
Photo: PAP/Jacek Turczyk
Incumbent Bronisław Komorowski won 47 percent of the vote. According to the Ipsos exit poll, turnout stood at 56.1 percent, seven percent more than in the first round of the ballot.
The release of the result was delayed due to a death at a polling station near Cieszyn in southern Poland, meaning it had to be closed for 90 minutes.
Andrzej Duda managed to claim victory after winning the first round of the presidential ballot by 0.99 percent on 10 May and launching a campaign offensive in the two-week run-up to Sunday’s decisive vote.
If the results are confirmed by the PKW State Electoral Commission, Duda will become Poland’s sixth president since the fall of communism, following on from rival Bronisław Komorowski’s five years in power.
Who is Andrzej Duda?
Duda, who celebrated his 43rd birthday on 16 May, is a lawyer hailing from the southern city of Kraków who is currently serving as an MEP.
Duda began his political career in the early 2000s in the liberal democratic Freedom Union (Unia Wolności), switching to the conservative Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS) as an advisor after the parliamentary elections in 2005.
In 2006 he became an undersecretary of state in the Justice Ministry under then-PiS MP Zbigniew Ziobro, going on to become an undersecretary of state in PiS-President Lech Kaczyński’s Presidential Chancellery in August 2008.
Following the Smolensk air catastrophe in April 2010, in which President Lech Kaczyński and 95 other high-ranking Poles died, Duda resigned from his post on 5 July 2010 after the snap election won Bronisław Komorowski the presidency.
In 2011, Andrzej Duda was elected as an MP from the Kraków constituency, and in November 2013 became PiS spokesman, a position he held until the beginning of 2014.
After he became an MEP in the European elections in 2014, he relinquished his post as a national MP.
Privately, Andrzej Duda is married and has one daughter who is currently studying at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. (jb)