There’s little uncertainty in these early presidential elections. Civic Platform’s Bronislaw Komorowski is the clear favourite front-runner and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, candidate for Law and Justice, is the best outsider. At the beginning of the presidential race the main interrogative is whether the speaker of the Sejm (Parliament) might win without a risky run-off.

 Current surveys give Komorowski around 45 percent of the vote, 15 percentage points more than Kaczynski. If none of the candidates receives over 50 percent of the vote on June 20th, a second round will be held on July 4th.

 In autumn 2005, in the very last hours of campaigning,  Lech Kaczynski succeeded in overturning the results of the first round of the presidential elections and the surveys that showed him as the loser against Donald Tusk.

 To avoid any bad surprise, Komorowski shouldn’t forget the past and try to find the best way to keep his voters watch. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, like his dead brother, is a good and experienced fighter. He will never surrender before the end of the contest.

 Till now, the emotional effect doesn’t seem to play a role after the air tragedy in Smolensk. The nationalist wave, whose chiefs were the twins Kaczynski, was already crushed in October 2007, when a record turnout – with 13% more voters – marked their defeat in the parliamentary polls. But, again, it was a record turnout.

 The new element is that Poland in 2010 is a different country from the one that got a complicated EU membership in May 2004. The followed psychological and political crisis after the adhesion fostered the rise of the Kaczynskis’.

 Today the scenario is more positive for the liberals. The Polish economy will grow at the fastest pace in the European Union this year, driven by export growth and investment, the European Commission said at the end of April, raising its November forecasts. Poland will expand 2.7 percent, compared with an average of 1 percent for the 27-member EU. Warsaw’s budget deficit will widen to 7.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 from 3.7 percent last year. The debt level estimate was revised to 53.9 percent of GDP from the earlier 57%.

 The 58-year-old Komorowski has all the cards to win. It depends on him not to make too many mistakes. Before the air tragedy in Smolensk, he pledged to work together with the Tusk government, saying that the country needs someone “who helps and doesn’t disturb, doesn’t block this modernisation process” as it was during Lech Kaczynski’s presidency. Now he has the chance.

List of candidates by signatures gained

Jaroslaw Kaczynski (PiS) – 1,650,000 
Bronislaw Komorowski (PO) – 770,000
Grzegorz Napieralski (SLD) – 380,000
Andrzej Olechowski – 233,000
Waldemar Pawlak (PSL) – 190,000
Marek Jurek (Prawica RP) – 180,000
Boguslaw Zietka (WZZ Sierpien ’80) – 170,000
Janusz Korwin-Mikke (UPR) – 138,000
Andrzej Lepper (Samoobrona) – 122,000
Kornel Morawiecki – 110,000