Challenges of re-democratisation and conflicting logics of polarisation: The case of Poland’s 2025 presidential elections

The 2025 Polish presidential elections marked a critical juncture in the country’s ongoing struggle between authoritarian backsliding and re-democratisation, confirming diagnoses of the fundamental tensions inherent in post-illiberal political transitions. The electoral defeat of the governing liberal “pro-democratic” coalition’s candidate Rafał Trzaskowski by Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość—PiS)-supported Karol Nawrocki laid bare the structural problems and tactical failures that have afflicted the government’s re-democratisation project since prime minister Donald Tusk and his allies came to power in late 2023. This paper examines how the results of the presidential elections illuminate three interconnected phenomena that are reshaping Polish politics and that may be symptomatic of broader tendencies in contemporary democratic polities: the structural and normative dilemmas of re-democratising governance in post-illiberal contexts; the persistence of affective polarisation and perceptions of ideological polarisation despite simultaneous voter dissatisfaction with polarisation and often substantial agreement on ideological issues; and the challenges of maintaining a diverse governing coalition in these circumstances. Drawing on expert surveys and surveys of public opinion conducted at the time of the presidential elections, the paper examines both elite-level political dynamics and mass-level attitudes.