UPDATE 3 - 08.20 CET - With 95 percent of votes counted, announced by Poland’s national election commission, Bronislaw Komorowski has a lead of 52.63 percent to 47.37 for Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Full results will be released Monday afternoon.
Turnout, says the commission, was 55.29 percent, when updated results were released over seven hours after polling stations closed (after 02.00 CET).
Exit polls released the moment polling stations closed at 20.00 CET, Sunday, suggested that Komorowski would win the presidential election by three percent or more.
While Komorowski’s campaign staff were jubilant on initial indicators that they had won, Adam Lipinski from Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s team said that even though his candidate may have lost, the vote was “a success” for the twin brother of the late Lech Kaczynski, but he was too far behind in the opinion polls in the beginning and “it was a very short campaign”.
Former left wing president Aleksander Kwasniewski - who was in the presidential palace for ten years over two terms - said that tomorrow “Poland will wake up with a 100 percent government {…} with 100 percent expectations,” referring to the fact that Poland has not had a head of state and government of the same party or political persuasion for five years. (pg/jb)