With coronavirus calling into question whether Poland will hold its presidential election on May 10, a new election date could also mean new candidate for Poland’s main opposition party Civic Platform (PO).
Current PO presidential candidate, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, has so far run a campaign that wasn’t spectacular even before the epidemic but has now crashed and burned.
If the elections will be postponed, then PO will need a new candidate, according to one of the party’s prominent politicians who did not want his name to be revealed due to “fatal mood of that already exists in the party”.
The election prospects for PO have not looked so poor in ages.
Another unnamed PO politician stated that Kidawa-Błońska did not even have the base of support that PO enjoyed from the last election.
“There is no chemistry between the candidate and party authorities. The staff isn’t working clearly. There are problems with decision-making and no new ideas. The campaign was coming to pieces and then the epidemic was the final nail in the coffin. She’s not the right candidate for tough times,” the unnamed PO politician said.
Prior to the epidemic, polls were not kind to PO’s candidate. In one poll, the Polish People’s Party’s (PSL) leader, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, had the highest ratings out of opposition candidates and was the only one that could beat Duda in the second round.
According to a survey conducted by Social Changes in mid-February, Duda had 40 percent of support, a 6 percentage point drop compared to the previous poll. In one of PiS’s internal surveys, Duda was even forecast to lose against Kidawa-Błońska.
This was the result of his government signing over €440 million to public television and not cancer care. The vulgar behaviors of some PiS MPs also hadn’t helped, but the epidemic reset Duda’s campaign.
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