Exit poll: conservative opposition ahead of prime minister Tusk's party in Poland's local elections

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — An exit poll released after Poland's local and regional elections on Sunday showed Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-EU party slightly trailing the conservative opposition party that governed Poland for eight years until December. But the socially liberal mayor of Warsaw, a Tusk ally, easily won another term in the capital.

Sunday's election was the first electoral test for Tusk's coalition government nearly four months since it took power.

The exit polls have a small margin of error and the final results are not expected until Monday. But they indicated that Law and Justice, the conservative party that governed Poland from 2015-2023, is still a political force to be reckoned with in the nation of 38 million people.

According to the Ipsos exit poll, Law and Justice won 33.7% of votes and Tusk's Civic Coalition won 31.9%.

Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski declared victory, and said the result was a message to those who had counted the party out.

“As Mark Twain once said, the news of my death is somewhat premature,” Kaczynski said, loosely quoting the American author.

Voters cast ballots for mayors as well as members of municipal councils and provincial assemblies, an important exercise in self-governance that is one of the great achievements of the democratic transformation that Poland made when it threw off communism 35 years ago.

Runoff votes will take place April 21 in cases where mayoral candidates do not win at least 50% of the vote in Sunday's first round.

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowsi will avoid a runoff after winning nearly 60% of the vote, according to the exit poll.

Several other groups trail the two main groups, including the Third Way coalition with a projected 13.5%, the Left with 6.8% and and the radical right-wing Confederation party with 7.5%.

Tusk's coalition government, which includes the Third Way and the Left, together won the national election in October. The result amid record turnout spelled the end of eight bumpy years of rule by Law and Justice, which was accused by the European Union of violating democratic standards with its changes to the judicial system and public media.

Tusk won on promises to reverse many of those changes and is trying to implement that program, but it isn't easy. For example, a promise to liberalize the strict abortion law is being hampered by conservatives in Tusk’s own coalition.

Local governments have played an important role in the two major crises of recent years, rolling out vaccinations against COVID-19 and helping the huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees who arrived in the country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The outgoing term of office for local officials was the longest since 1989 after Law and Justice extended it from four to five years, and then delayed the elections by half a year, worried that holding local elections along with those to the national parliament would hurt its chances.