Polish presidential run-off a razor-edge race

Poland's presidential run-off on Sunday, pitting liberal incumbent Bronislaw Komorowski against conservative populist challenger Andrzej Duda, is on a knife-edge with opinion polls and analysts unable to call it.

Sunday's outcome is also seen as a harbinger of things to come in an autumn general election ahead of which the governing centrist Civic Platform (PO) -- closely associated with Komorowski -- is running neck and neck with Duda's conservative opposition Law and Justice Party.

The 62-year-old Komorowski, a communist-era dissident who has been president since 2010 was stunned by his narrow May 10 first-round loss to Duda.

Duda, a 43-year-old lawyer and MEP with a populist streak, scored a one percent victory with promises of generous social spending, introducing an earlier retirement age and lower taxes that appealed mostly to disillusioned voters.

Analysts were at a loss to tip a favourite ahead of Sunday's vote.

"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 Friday.

Duda scored 51 percent support narrowly ahead of Komorowski with 49 percent in an opinion poll conducted May 18-20 and released Friday by Poland's Polska The Times daily.

Another recent survey by the CBOS institute also showed Duda with a narrow 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.
 
- Designs on power -

Analysts suggest that Komorowski's shaky showing at the polls is in large measure a signal from voters to his friends in the PO.

After eight years in power, the party is seen as having failed to keep its promises on administrative and tax reform.

Led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS knows wooing disillusioned voters is key to its ambitions for a comeback both in the presidency and parliament.

Kaczynski -- an ex-premier and the twin brother of the late president Lech Kaczynski, who died in a 2010 plane crash in Russia -- makes no secret of his desire to return to power. A Duda win could bring him closer to the goal.

After his defeat to Komorowski in the 2010 presidential election, Kaczynski floated the upbeat and younger Duda as his party's candidate and removed himself completely from the campaign.

Known as the puppet master in his party, Kaczysnki has limited his campaigning to giving interviews on the ultra-Catholic broadcaster Radio Maryja and its television arm Trwam, whose audience comprises diehard PiS supporters.

- Winning over the undecided -

Well aware of their neck-and-neck situation, Komorowski and Duda were kissing babies and shaking hands nationwide right up to the last hours of the campaign, trying to win over the undecided.

Capturing the electorate of anti-establishment rock singer and political newcomer Pawel Kukiz is key.

He burst out of nowhere to secure a surprise third place with 20 percent of the vote in round one, appealing overwhelmingly to disillusioned voters, especially young Poles with a hard time on the job market.

A country of 38 million people, Poland is the only EU member to have avoided recession over the last quarter century.

Its economy is set to expand by 3.5 percent this year, yet joblessness has remained stubbornly high clocking in at 11.3 percent in April.

Komorowski has billed himself as a seasoned statesman and,

during Thursday's final debate broadcast nationwide, insisted that Poland's membership in the European Union and NATO is a "guarantor" of its security and prosperity.

Duda repeated his promises to lower taxes and the retirement age, which the PO government had pushed up from 65 to 67 years.

"On Sunday, Poland will choose between two factions. First, that of reason and predictability represented by Komorowski, who is well-known to Poles," Mocek said.

"And second, that of faith and unpredictability embodied by Duda, because this isn't an independent politician: behind him lurks Jaroslaw Kaczynski."