Bronislaw Komorowski, the recently elected Civic Platform candidate for this year’s presidential elections, has gone ahead of PM Donald Tusk as Poland’s most trusted politician.

The opinion poll by CBOS finds that 57 percent of Poles mentioned Komorowski - who won the Civic Platform primary election last Saturday - as a trustworthy politician, four percentage points ahead of Donald Tusk. Komorowski’s rival in the primary, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, was mentioned by 52 percent.

Observers say that the recent high-profile exposure given to Komorowski, who is the Speaker in the lower house of Parliament (Sejm) has helped his popularity.

President Lech Kaczynski has the trust of 40 percent of the country; independent presidential candidate Andrzej Olechowski has a similar level of support.

Fifty one percent of those surveyed said they did not trust leader of the Law and Justice party, Jarolsaw Kaczynski, however.

The survey was carried out between 4-10 March, from a representative sample of 995.

Platform up, Law and Justice down

Meanwhile, according to the latest opinion poll by the Homo Homini Institute, 45.8 percent of Poles would vote for Civic Platform (PO) in parliamentary elections if they held this month, while 24.8 percent would tick the lists for the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. In comparison with the last month support for the ruling party has gone up by 3.3 percentage points, while Law and Justice has seen a hemorrhaging of support by 4.7 percentage points. Two other parties – the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and the Polish Peasants Party (PiS) – would go beyond the five percent threshold necessary to get into parliament, gaining receiving 13.9 and 5 percent of votes.  

The survey was conducted at the end of March from a sample of 1067 people. (pg/mg)