By DPA,
Warsaw: Exit polls suggested that there would be no clear winner in Sunday’s Polish presidential election, requiring a second round of voting.
None of the candidates got above 50 percent support as needed to win outright Sunday.
Bronislaw Komorowski of the centre-right Civic Platform party got nearly 46 percent support, exit polls conducted by TVN 24 said. Jaroslaw Kaczynski of the right-wing Law and Justice party received 33 percent.
More than 52 percent of Poles voted Sunday in the first-round election to replace President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in April in Russia, according to exit polls by TVN 24.
There were 30.5 million eligible voters and some 25,000 polling stations throughout the country in elections that had been slated for autumn, before Kaczynski’s death.
Komorowski had been leading with about 50 percent of the vote in pre-election opinion surveys but looked to have fall short of the required majority.
He called on supporters to mobilize for the second round July 4.
“There are moments in a politician’s life where a person can feel happy and complete … when you feel the trust of millions of people in Poland,” Komorowski said at a rally after the ballots closed. “I want to ask you from the bottom of my heart to mobilize and fight to the end for a better future for Poland.”
Komorowski congratulated the other eight candidates that had run for the office, especially the left-wing party that had surprisingly high results.
Grzegorz Napieralski, candidate for the Democratic Left Alliance, had shot from some two or three percent support at the start of the campaign to 13 percent in the exit polls. He told his supporters at a rally that the exit polls showed his party was a “real alternative” to the right-wing.
Napieralski said that the campaign was difficult amid two tragedies: the plane crash in Russia and recent heavy flooding in southern Poland that has left 22 dead since May. But he said the left-wing managed to show they are capable of working hard and mobilising voters.
Komorowski was parliament speaker when he became acting president April 10 after the death of Lech Kaczynski in the plane crash in Smolensk.
Komorowski had pledged during his campaign to unite Poland’s divided political scene around common goals and to catch the country up to more prosperous members of the European Union, which it joined in 2004.
Kaczynski, twin brother of the deceased president, spoke at a rally and said the party needed to win, “for the good of Poland”.
“The key to ultimate victory – because these elections are not over – is our belief and our conviction that we can, and need to win,” Kaczynski said.
He is known as a eurosceptic who has spoken out harshly against Russia. In the current elections, Kaczynski has toned down his rhetoric and said he wanted to continue his brother’s legacy if chosen as president.
Kaczynski said the second round would be a decision between “two visions of Poland,” and that there were “significant differences” between himself and Komorowski.