MCC Votes & Seats Podcast – Election insight
Az MCC Politikatudományi Műhelyének beszélgetéssorozatában szakértők és politikusok segítségével azt elemezzük, hogy a különböző európai országokban aktuálisan zajló parlamenti és önkormányzati választásoknak mely szereplők a valódi nyertesei és mi tekinthető igazi győzelemnek a szavazások után.
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With the help of local guest experts, in the podcast series of the MCC Center for Political Science, we endeavor to analyze which actors are the real winners of the parliamentary elections taking place throughout Europe, and what exactly can be considered an ultimate victory after the ballot counts.
MCC Votes & Seats Podcast – Election insight
2025 Polish Presidential Election – A Referendum on the Tusk Cabinet?
The second round of the Polish presidential election was held on 1 June 2025 with Rafał Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki as the two leading candidates standing after the first round. The head-to-head battle resulted in the narrow victory of the PiS-backed conservative Nawrocki, which is a challenging development and a huge blow for Donald Tusk’s government, already struggling advancing its agenda in symbolic and substantive issues. At the same time, the result well demonstrated how polarised and divided the Polish society is between at least two visions on the country’s future. The election has far-reaching implications for the dynamic of Polish domestic politics both on the left and the right, but the activism and agenda of the president-elect will most likely be detectable also in international politics.
What happened at the polls, what motivated the Poles to vote in such a large number? What role perception will Nawrocki have, how actively will he use his veto right? What dynamics can unfold on the left and on the right? Will anything change in the presidential position on Ukraine after Duda? How will Nawrocki navigate regional cooperation platforms, will he prefer the Three Seas Initiative, and/or will attempt to revive the Visegrad Four? These and similar questions are discussed in detail in the new episode of the Votes & Seats podcast series of the Centre for Political Science (MCC), where Szabolcs Janik had the honour to talk with professor Aleks Szczerbiak, head of department at the University of Sussex.
With the help of guest experts and politicians, in the podcast series of MCC’s Centre for Political Science we endeavor to analyze which actors are the real winners of the parliamentary and municipal elections taking place this year in different European countries and what exactly can be considered a real victory after the ballot counts.