Poland’s incumbent President Andrzej Duda said on June 13 that the Polish LGBT rights movement peddles an “ideology” that is “more destructive” than Communism.

Duda spoke in the southwestern town of Brzeg at a campaign rally, part of his touring of Poland to secure reelection in the presidential vote due on June 28. His was calculated to pander to the core of his electorate – the conservative Catholic Poles – but appears risky in the context of building support with the moderates, whose votes the president needs to win.

“There are attempts to convince us that [LGBT] are people but this is simply an ideology,” Duda said.

“My parents’ generation didn’t fight the communist ideology for 40 years to … now allow another, even more destructive, ideology to come,” the president added.

The conservative electorate can only give Duda around 35%-40% of the vote. In Poland’s presidential elections, the winner must scoop at least 50% plus one vote to win either in the first round or in the run-off between the two strongest contenders. 

Duda has long lead the polls at an average of just over 40%, based on poll results published during the past week. That points to the run-off vote – scheduled for July 12 – against the president’s main rival, the centrist mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski, polling at an average of nearly 29%.

The president is a staunch ally of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which leads the coalition government of the United Right. The coalition needs Duda’s victory to continue to govern effectively, as it does not have a majority in the parliament to overturn presidential vetoes, were it to face an opposition president. 

But the run-off may turn out to be tricky for the incumbent. Polls suggest only a single-digit percentage point gap between Duda and Trzaskowski, ranging from 0.2pp to 7pp. That is by no means a safe margin for Duda who stands to lose if Trzaskowski manages to consolidate the wide opposition electorate in July.

Duda’s campaign could also falter because the PiS-led government’s handling of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and the resulting economic crisis will reflect on the president. 

Poland has lifted most of the anti-coronavirus restrictions in the past few weeks. Poland and Sweden are the only EU countries where the number of infections has not yet reached peak, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said this week. 

The reopening of the economy has led medical experts to warn of a new wave of infection that could hit the country in a few weeks, possibly shortly before or during the election weekend.