Poland's far-left populists whose electorate is set to play a key role in determining the European Union newcomer's president hinted on Monday they will back conservative candidate Lech Kaczynski in a run-off ballot.
Partial results of Sunday's election gave free-market enthusiast Donald Tusk 35.8 percent of the vote, 2.5 points ahead of Kaczynski but short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a second round of voting on October 23.
The latest opinion poll published on Monday shows Tusk winning the run-off 51 to 49 percent. Tusk's and Kaczynski's parties, traditional allies rooted in the pro-democracy Solidarity movement, won general elections two weeks ago but their coalition talks have been mired in the presidential campaign pitting their leaders as rivals.
Analysts said both campaigns will now focus on winning over the "orphaned" electorates of leftist and populist candidates, who jointly won 26 percent of the vote on Sunday.
"Lech Kaczynski's programme is very close to our offer... but we feel they should make the first move," Renata Beger from the populist Self-Defence party, told private television TVN24.
"Our electorate wants a calm Poland, which takes care of its citizens, not a liberal state," she said, inviting Kaczynski's Law and Justice party to ditch Tusk's pro-business group and form a government with populist backing.
Exit polls showed 40 percent of Self-Defence's electorate will back Kaczynski in the run-off and about a quarter favoured Tusk.
Reaching out to those frustrated by the hardships of Poland's long trek into the European Union should be easier for Kaczynski, who promises to protect the welfare state, struggling heavy industry and small plot farmers.
But leftists voters, 10 percent of whom backed social democrat Marek Borowski in Sunday's vote, may be afraid of Kaczynski's anti-communist past and his backing by the radical religious right.
Tusk has tried to brand his rival as a "radical" who could isolate Poland internationally and scare big business and pitched himself as a candidate who could unite not divide Poles.
"Tusk will try to associate himself with the style of (outgoing leftist President Aleksander) Kwasniewski - conciliatory, open, accessible - to win over leftists," said Marek Migalski, sociologist at the Slask University in Katowice.
Kwasniewski - Poland's most popular leftist, who cannot run for a third term - has signalled he would back Tusk in the run-off but has not spoken on the issue since Sunday's vote.
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