Both candidates in Poland’s runoff presidential election on Sunday claimed victory after an exit poll showed Warsaw’s pro-EU mayor Rafal Trzaskowski just 0.6% ahead of his rival, right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki, who has made Holocaust revisionism part of his campaign.

“We won… by a whisker,” Trzaskowski, 53, who is backed by the ruling Civic Coalition party, told supporters after the Ipsos poll showed him narrowly ahead with 50.3 percent.

Nawrocki, 42, who is supported by Poland’s outgoing conservative President Andrzej Duda and US President Donald Trump, was at 49.7 percent. “Tonight we will win,” Nawrocki told his election night rally. “We will win and we will save Poland.”

The Ipsos exit poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, and the final vote is likely to change somewhat, making the result still too close to call.

The state electoral commission was expected to release the final vote count on Monday, though the result could be known sooner.

The runoff follows a tightly contested first round on May 18, in which Trzaskowski won just over 31% and Nawrocki nearly 30%, eliminating 11 other candidates.

Far-right candidates Sławomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun came in third and fourth, giving Nawrocki a larger pool of right-wing voters to draw on in the runoff.

Nawrocki, who has the support of Trump, hasn’t wasted time courting those voters. He signed a list of Mentzen’s demands, such as refusing to ratify Ukraine’s entry to NATO, sending Polish soldiers to Ukraine, or expanding EU powers.

He has also sought favor from Braun, who made antisemitism a feature of his campaign, asking his rivals in a televised debate last month what they planned to do about the........

© The Times of Israel