Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum

Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum

Every Election is now Existential

What the Polish presidential election tells the rest of us

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Anne Applebaum
Jun 07, 2025
∙ Paid

When the presidential election polls closed last Sunday night, this is what we saw on our television screens in Warsaw: Exit polls predicting that Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, had won with 50.03% of the vote, defeating Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the authoritarian-populist Law and Justice party, who had 49.7%.

By morning, after all of …

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