A tight presidential election this weekend in Poland hinges heavily on young voters, a restive demographic with a big stake in the direction of the country.
But the two candidates facing off in a runoff election on Sunday share a big problem: Young Poles do not much like either of them.
That is adding to the unpredictability of an election widely seen as pivotal for the future of the biggest economic and military power in the European Union’s formerly communist East. It is also critical to efforts by the country’s centrist prime minister, Donald Tusk, to unravel the legacy of his populist predecessor.
In a first round of voting on May 18, voters aged 18 to 29 overwhelmingly supported anti-establishment candidates who failed to make it to the runoff. They mostly shunned the candidates competing on Sunday, who represent Poland’s two dominant political parties — Civic Platform, led by Mr. Tusk; and Law and Justice, the former governing party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The runoff pits Rafal Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw who is backed by Mr. Tusk’s party, against Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian and former boxer supported by Law and Justice.
Coming only two weeks after a presidential election in Romania in which voters chose a centrist over a hard-right admirer of President Trump, Poland’s vote is being closely watched in Europe and the United States as a test of right-wing populism’s staying power.
“Don’t let the globalists and unelected bureaucrats steal your elections, as they did in Romania,” George Simion, the defeated hard-right candidate in Romania, told a gathering in Poland this past week of the American Conservative Political Action Conference. Kristi Noem, Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary who also spoke at the event, endorsed the Law and Justice candidate.
What American and European fans of Mr. Trump see as a climactic battle between left and right is seen by many young Polish voters as an infuriating rerun of a decades-old struggle.
“You only get angry looking at system politicians,” said Jan Stachura, 20, a student in Tychy, a town in Poland’s former industrial heartland in the southwestern region of Silesia.
He said he had voted for neither of Sunday’s contenders in the first round on May 18 and did not know whether he would even bother to vote in the runoff.
His brother, Wojciech, 24, an I.T. manager, said he did not vote in the first round and probably would not on Sunday. Given the grip of the two main parties, he said, “I don’t believe my vote can change anything.”
Mr. Tusk, 68, and Mr. Kaczynski, 75, first entered politics more than 40 years ago when Poland was still a Soviet satellite.
After Poland joined the European Union in 2004 — 15 years after communism collapsed — they emerged as leaders of two hostile camps: one committed to embracing the values and rules of the European Union, the other infused with nationalism and fealty to the Roman Catholic church.
They have rotated in and out of power since, leaving Polish politics in a repetitive loop.
Mr. Kaczynski accuses Mr. Tusk of being a “German agent” more interested in serving Berlin and Brussels than ordinary Poles. Mr. Tusk has attacked his rival as a populist reactionary intent on dismantling democracy and withdrawing Poland from the European Union.
Mr. Trzaskowski won the first round barely ahead of Mr. Nawrocki, who finished second. Whether Mr. Trzaskowski can prevail on Sunday depends heavily on how young voters who backed the far right and leftists in the first round, cast their ballots.
A widespread plague-on-both-your-houses feeling among younger Poles has brought unusual volatility to politics, said Tomasz Slupik, a political science professor at the University of Silesia.
Only 22 percent of voters under 30, according to exit poll data, cast their ballots in the first round for the two candidates competing on Sunday. Nearly 70 percent voted instead for far-right candidates and fringe leftists, with more than half of them supporting Slawomir Mentzen, a libertarian who is hostile to Ukrainian refugees, taxes and the European Union.
“This might be the beginning of the end of Poland’s party duopoly,” Dr. Slupik said. Young voters’ disillusionment, he added, was partly the rebellious spirit of youth amplified by social media. But, he added, it also reflected a deeper erosion of trust across generations, despite Poland’s booming economy and its emergence as a diplomatic and military player in Europe.
The Polish presidency has no say in setting policy, but its veto power over legislation passed by the government allowed the departing president, Andrzej Duda, an ally of Mr. Kaczynski, to thwart much of Mr. Tusk’s agenda.
Victory for Mr. Nawrocki on Sunday would probably mean more trench warfare between the rival camps, hobbling Mr. Tusk’s ability to govern and clouding his party’s prospects in the next parliamentary election in 2027.
Speaking at a rally for Mr. Trzaskowski in Warsaw last weekend, Mr. Tusk warned this would bring disaster, describing Mr. Nawrocki as a “gangster” unfit for the presidency. “Poland, wake up! This cannot be!” he said.
Many younger voters, on both left and right have tuned out.
The disenchantment of younger Poles was particularly evident in mock elections held last month in high schools as part of a national project to assess the political leanings of those still too young to vote.
Finishing first at Leon Kruczkowski High School in Tychy was Adrian Zandberg, a leftist who came in sixth in the first round of the real election.
Mr. Mentzen also did well, winning nearly 13 percent of Tychy’s high school vote. His biggest young fans are teenage boys like Oliwier Milon, 16, who said he supported the far-right politician’s desire for Poland to leave the European Union and expel Ukrainian refugees.
“They feel too much at ease here and take our money,” he said of Ukrainians, sitting with five friends, all Mentzen supporters, at an outdoor market in Tychy.
One of his friends, Fabian Popielecki, 15, chipped in that he supported Mr. Mentzen’s criticism of L.G.B.T. rights. “We don’t tolerate such things here,” he said.
All agreed that they saw nothing to like in either Civic Platform or Law and Justice. “They are for old people,” Mr. Milon said.
“Youth is all about being extreme,” said Bozena Tomaka-Olszanska, a high school history teacher who coordinated a mock student election in the nearby town of Gliwice. “Young people are clearly fed up with the two-element system of power.”
Many of those old enough to vote are also unhappy with established parties and their veteran leaders. Anna Liebner, 29, a Tychy resident who manages fiber optic networks, said she voted in the first round for Mr. Zandberg, the leftist, because he “was out of the system” and had put forward policies she liked, like higher taxes on the wealthy.
Kamil Poczta, 30, an I.T. worker, said he, too, had voted for Mr. Zandberg in the hope of breaking the Civic Platform-Law and Justice cycle.
Nonetheless, Mr. Poczta and Ms. Liebner both said they would vote for Mr. Trzaskowski.
More uncertain is which way Mr. Mentzen’s voters, mostly young men, will jump, though a recent opinion poll indicated that around 65 percent of them would vote for Mr. Nawrocki.
If that turns out to be accurate, Mr. Nawrocki could well win.
The turn away from established parties by Poland’s young has exasperated their elders.
Stanislaw Brejdygant, 88, an actor and playwright who experienced both Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland, last week begged young voters “to come to their senses” and vote for Mr. Trzaskowski in an impassioned opinion essay in a liberal Warsaw newspaper.
“I appreciate and admire your rebellion,” he said. “But believe me,” he added in an appeal to Mr. Mentzen’s voters, “it is one thing to rebel in a democratic, free country, in which you live now, and quite another in the one that your idol wants to give you.”
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting.
Andrew Higgins is the East and Central Europe bureau chief for The Times based in Warsaw. He covers a region that stretches from the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Kosovo, Serbia and other parts of former Yugoslavia.
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