Majority of Poles want Tusk to become prime minister

Polish President Andrzej Duda should appoint Donald Tusk as the new Prime Minister, according to 40.4% of respondents to a United Surveys poll for RMF FM and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

40% of Poles want to see Tusk as a Prime Minister

According to the survey results, Tusk was supported as head of government by the majority of respondents, while the candidacy of current Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was backed by 30.2%.

Almost 18% of respondents expect another candidate to become prime minister.

Mateusz Morawiecki has strong support from his electorate. About 80% of Law and Justice voters believe that the president should entrust him with the formation of the government. Only 5% of them accept Tusk.

Among opposition voters, 64% choose Donald Tusk, but 21% believe the president should choose another candidate.

Two weeks after the parliamentary elections, it is still unknown who the Polish president will entrust with forming the government. Last week, Duda said there were two primary candidates for the post of prime minister – Mateusz Morawiecki and Donald Tusk.

Opposition headed by Tusk came as a winner of the election

Donald Tusk led the opposition into the October 2023 parliamentary elections and won. Although PiS finished first, garnering some 35 per cent of the vote, it came up short of a ruling majority in the Sejm, even with the addition of the seats of its potential coalition partner, Confederation.

Civic Platform finished second with about 31 per cent. However, along with its other opposition parties, Third Way and the New Left (which took about 14 per cent and about 9 per cent of the vote, respectively), it claimed roughly 250 seats, enough to form a majority coalition government with Tusk as its leader.

Who is Donald Tusk?

Tusk returned to the centre of the Polish political stage in July 2021 when he again assumed leadership of Civic Platform, announcing his intention to take on the ruling PiS, which took a conservative and Eurosceptic stance, and to return to power.

Donald Tusk was the first prime minister of Poland to serve two consecutive terms (2007–14) since the fall of communism in 1989. Tusk served as president of the European Council (2014–19). Among the special challenges during his term were Russian aggression in Europe—the Kremlin had annexed Ukrainian Crimea in March 2014—and Britain’s 2016 decision to exit from the EU.

Tusk was reelected to a second term in 2017 but stepped down as president of the European Council in November 2019. He was elected head of the European People’s Party, a multinational political group representing the interests of allied conservative parties in Europe.