Rafał Trzaskowski is the liberal mayor of Warsaw, backed by Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition (KO). In the first round of Poland's 2025 presidential election on May 18th, he won 31.4% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Karol Nawrocki of Law and Justice (PiS) on 29.5%. In the June 1st run-off he lost, taking 49.1% to Nawrocki's 50.9%. Exit polls on election night had Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, but the final count went the other way.
He had pledged to restrict benefits for some Ukrainian refugees. His defeat owed in part to the government's inability to deliver on promises to purge PiS's cronies from the courts, public media and state-owned companies—blocked by the outgoing PiS-aligned president, Andrzej Duda—and its failure to liberalise access to abortion.
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.