At the election night rally of Polish presidential candidate Rafal Trzaskowski in Warsaw, euphoria mixed with anxiety on Sunday.
The pro-EU mayor of the Polish capital told a jubilant crowd he “won... by a whisker,” after an initial exit poll gave him 50.3 percent of votes against nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki, on 49.7 percent.
But a later projection based on partial results from polling stations reversed the prediction, putting Nawrocki at 50.7 percent against Trzaskowski’s 49.3 percent.
The initial exit poll was welcomed with an outburst of joy from the members of the ruling centrist Civic Coalition party at the museum where the rally was held.
After Trzaskowski finished speaking, his team conceded the victory was far from a done deal.
“Of course, there’s a sleepless night ahead of us,” Dorota Loboda, a lawmaker for the Civic Coalition said, adding she would spend it checking the results trickling in from the electoral commission.
“The champagne will only pop when the national electoral commission confirms the results,” she added.
Loboda was wearing red beads – a trademark of left-wing politician Joanna Senyszyn who symbolically passed them on to Trzaskowski’s wife and endorsed the centrist candidate.
Trzaskowski was running on pledges to pave the way to relaxing Poland’s near-total ban on abortions.
“Red beads will probably become a political, social symbol of happiness,” said Monika Rosa, a lawmaker for Civic Coalition who spearheaded the campaign initiative “Women with Trzaskowski”.
She hailed what she called an “exceptional” political mobilisation of women – but admitted after “the first euphoria, the first joy” she would be monitoring the results “until the end”.
Within two hours after the first exit poll was released, the hall where Trzaskowski was counting on celebrating the victory had largely emptied.
Just a few kilometers away, dozens of Nawrocki supporters stayed put and welcomed the late poll with a relief.
“I’m now an optimist,” said Pawel Szmaglinski, 25.
“The mood here was gloomy,” he said. “I myself did not believe, but when I saw the late poll, I changed.”
At Trzaskowski’s party, Dorota Niedziela, the parliament’s deputy speaker, said any attempts to predict the final margin between the candidates were futile.
“No matter what we say, it will be fortune-telling. We just have to wait calmly,” Niedziela said.