Polish presidential frontrunners Rafał Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki faced off in an at times heated debate Friday night.

Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, improved on underwhelming performances in previous debates. Right-winger Nawrocki, supported by the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, grew more tense as the one-on-one continued.

But neither candidate managed to deliver a knockout punch.

At stake is not just who gets to be president, but whether Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Trzaskowski’s party boss, can get his agenda off the ground after nearly two years of obstructionism by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally. For PiS, the outcome will determine whether the defeat the party suffered in the 2023 parliamentary election was just a temporary setback.

Trzaskowski and Nawrocki are virtually level in the polls ahead of the June 1 runoff, suggesting that even small shifts in voter attitudes or turnout could decide the outcome. In the first round of the presidential vote on May 18, Trzaskowski edged ahead with just under 31.4 percent of the vote, while Nawrocki followed closely with 29.5 percent.

The far right’s surprisingly strong showing among the other contenders could prove critical to the final result. Sławomir Mentzen of the Konfederacja party came in third with 14.8 percent, and the anti-Semitic and anti-EU agitator Grzegorz Braun unexpectedly secured 6.3 percent to place fourth.

The far right thus leapfrogged past the centrist and left contenders, who only garnered around 14 percent collectively among three candidates.

Tight spot

That has placed Trzaskowski in a tight spot, needing to appeal both to far-right and left-wing voters, while also mobilizing his core supporters to show up in greater numbers at polling stations on June 1.

“Your mobilization is essential because it will really be a razor-thin margin,” Trzaskowski said during the debate. “Choose a president who simply likes people. Choose a president who respects others. Choose a president for whom values like honesty and ordinary human decency are principles that guide his life,” Trzaskowski said.

Nawrocki’s strategy relies on attracting as many far-right voters as possible, a more natural constituency for him, while counting that liberal voters — disillusioned with Tusk — will stay home.

However, Nawrocki’s interview with the libertarian Mentzen on the latter’s YouTube channel on Thursday turned awkward at times. The PiS-backed frontrunner struggled with questions about taxation and the EU Green Deal. Nawrocki even went as far as to lambast PiS for the party’s record while in power between 2015 and 2023.

Trzaskowski will meet Mentzen on his YouTube channel Saturday evening.

In the debate Friday night, Trzaskowski’s approach was to try to expose Nawrocki’s lack of experience and highlight unresolved controversies from his past, such as taking over an apartment from an elderly man and alleged involvement in a bare-fist brawl between football hooligans in 2009.

Though questions the rival asked each other were grouped to cover topics such as economy, health care and defense and security, exchanges often devolved into personal attacks. The debate format, with 30 seconds to ask and 90 seconds to respond, did not lend itself to deeper discussion.

In his closing statement, Nawrocki appealed for support to prevent “one man controlling everything in Poland,” referring to Tusk. PiS was in exactly such control during their two terms in power with the outgoing Duda.