Poles voted today in the final round of a cliffhanger presidential election race between the conservative incumbent Bronislaw Komorowski and an even more conservative challenger.
Exit polls are expected to be released at 10:30 p.M. (local time), a delay of an hour and a half caused by the death of an elderly woman at a polling station. The station had to close for a while, and by law had to stay open longer to make up for that lost time. Exit polls can't be released until all stations are closed.
Final results are expected late Monday.
In his five years in office, the 62-year-old Komorowski has been popular and was expected to win re-election easily. But he narrowly lost in the first round of voting to Andrzej Duda, a little-known 43-year-old lawyer and member of the European Parliament with the Law and Justice party who waged an energetic campaign.
Polls in recent days have shown the race as being too close to call.
Duda's strong showing in the first round on May 10 has exposed a rising disillusionment with the long-ruling Civic Platform party, with which Komorowski is allied.
In its eight years of rule, Civic Platform has overseen unprecedented economic growth that has helped the country raise its profile internationally, something seen in the election of the former Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, as head of the European Union.
But the party has been hurt by corruption scandals, and even by the loss of Tusk, a charismatic presence capable of skilful damage control during crises.
Many Poles are angry that the country's much-touted economic growth has helped a small minority of Poles, with low wages and job insecurity still motivating many to seek a better life abroad.
Most people "have not benefited from the economic change," said Marcin Wolski, a well-known satirist at Law and Justice's election night gathering in Warsaw. "Poland needs change and Duda is the sign of the change that Poland needs."
Wolski praised the party's strong attachment to "Catholicism and traditional and historical values that matter to Poles."
The president has limited powers but the election is being closely watched as a sign for how the two parties will fare in the more significant parliamentary election this fall.
Although both are conservative, the Civic Platform party has a more liberal stance on some issues, such as in vitro fertilization, and is more pro-European than Law and Justice, which has a nationalistic streak and has demanded more sovereignty from Brussels.
