Polish presidential election, 2010

Presidential elections were held in Poland on 20 June 2010. As no candidate received a majority of votes in the first round, a second round was held on 4 July 2010. Bronisław Komorowski, the acting President of Poland and vice-chairman of the Civic Platform, defeated Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of recently deceased President Lech Kaczyński and chairman of Law and Justice. The global financial crisis, flooding in Poland and the Smolensk disaster were the main themes in the last months of the election campaign.

Background

The 2010 presidential election was expected to be a rematch of the 2005 election between Lech Kaczyński and Donald Tusk. Since the last presidential election, Polish politics had become centered around the rivalry between Law and Justice and the Civic Platform. President Kaczyński and Prime Minister Tusk were constantly battling each other over who should represent Poland on the international stage. Tusk was leading Kaczyński in all the opinion polling (as he did in 2005 before he ultimately lost) and the election was expected to be a dirty one. However, this rematch never came to be. Donald Tusk announced in January 2010 that he will not run for President because he wants to remain Prime Minister. Lech Kaczyński was set to declare his candidacy for re-election on 23 May but he died on 10 April in the Smolensk air disaster.

After Donald Tusk declined to run for president, the Civic Platform organized a presidential primary. The primary was won by Bronisław Komorowski who defeated Radosław Sikorski receiving 68.5% of the vote to Sikorski's 31.5%. Bronisław Komorowski consistently lead Lech Kaczyński by double digits in the first round and by a 2-to-1 margin in the second round. No other candidate registered support in the double digits.

After President Lech Kaczyński's death in a plane crash on 10 April 2010, the Constitution required the Marshal of the Sejm to declare the date within two weeks, with the election to take place on a weekend within the following 60 days, i.e. 20 June at the latest. On 21 April, the Marshal, Bronisław Komorowski, announced the election date as 20 June 2010. Candidates were required to register by 26 April 2010 (with 1,000 signatures of voters in support) and submit 100,000 signatures by 6 May 2010.

Originally, Kaczyński was up for re-election between 19 September and 3 October; the exact date would have been announced between 23 May and 23 June, before the end of his first five-year term of office.

Two candidates for the election died in the crash. Incumbent Lech Kaczyński was nominated as the Law and Justice party candidate (he had yet to accept the nomination, but it was widely believed that he would do so), and Jerzy Szmajdziński was to have run for the Democratic Left Alliance. Jarosław Kaczyński ran for president as the replacement for his deceased twin brother. Jerzy Szmajdziński's replacement was Grzegorz Napieralski.

Senate by-elections to fill the three seats whose senators died in the crash – Krystyna Bochenek (PO), Janina Fetlińska

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