Warsaw---Poles vote Sunday in the second round of a too-close-to-call presidential election with incumbent centrist Bronislaw Komorowski trying to fend off the populist challenge of conservative newcomer Andrzej Duda.
Sunday's result is also being billed as a pointer to the outcome of the country's autumn general election.
After nearly eight years in power, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), in which Komorowski once served as minister, is running neck and neck in the polls with Duda's right-wing opposition Law and Justice Party (PiS).
Even so, the cerebral Komorowski, a 62-year-old communist-era dissident, was stunned by his razor-thin defeat in the first round to his energetic challenger on May 10.
Duda, a 43-year-old lawyer and MEP with a populist streak, scored a one percent victory by winning over disillusioned voters with promises of generous social spending, an earlier retirement age and lower taxes.
"I'm waiting for the promised 500 zloty (121 euros, $134) in benefits per child -- and I have five," Duda voter Malgorzata Dorota Slizankiewicz wrote Saturday in a comment to his official Facebook campaign page.
"I just wonder where you'll get the money, Mr Duda," she added, echoing widespread misgivings over the feasibility of his promises.
Head of state since 2010, Komorowski is by contrast a seasoned defence specialist who has won support from the Polish-born former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski as well as a bevy of Polish actors and athletes.
But analysts said Sunday's vote was too close to call.
"The victory of one or the other will be a narrow one and is impossible to predict on the basis of polls," Stanislaw Mocek, a political scientist at the Polish Academy of Sciences told AFP.
Duda was narrowly ahead of Komorowski with 51 percent in an opinion poll conducted May 18-20 and released Friday by the Polska The Times daily.
Two other surveys also showed Duda with a paper-thin lead, but a Millward Brown poll put Komorowski on top.
The Polish head of state acts as commander in chief of the armed forces, heads foreign policy and is able to introduce and veto legislation.
AFP
