Nearly final election results: Duda wins by 500,000 votes

Polish President Andrzej Duda has won five more years in power on a socially conservative, religious platform in a closely fought election that is likely to deepen Warsaw's isolation in the European Union.

Nearly final results from Sunday's presidential election runoff showed Duda, 48, on over 51%, giving him an unassailable lead over liberal Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who won almost 49% of the votes, the National Election Commission said.

A devout Catholic, Duda is allied with the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and his victory reinforces the government's mandate to pursue reforms of the judiciary and media which the European Commission says subvert democratic standards. Duda has largely backed the PiS policies. His victory makes renewed confrontation with the European Commission likely as the EU executive tries to deal with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising nationalism across the 27-member bloc.

"To a large extent, the policy of Brussels, or rather Berlin, had focused on supporting the opposition," Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a PiS lawmaker, told Reuters. "Polish society is not accepting this."

Backed by PiS, Duda ran an acrimonious campaign in an election that was held despite the pandemic and was laced with homophobic language, attacks on private media and accusations that Trzaskowski serve foreign interests instead of Poland's.

Trzaskowski, who had said he would repair Poland's relations with Europe and use the presidential veto power to hold back any legislation that would subvert the rule of law, dismissed the accusations.

Before PiS and Duda came to power in 2015, Poland had one of the most pro-European administrations in the bloc, with divisions focusing on climate change and migration, in addition to democratic norms.

Rifts are likely to be evident this week when EU leaders discuss the bloc's long-term budget, with Brussels facing growing calls for funding to be made conditional on respect for the rule of law.

"EU institutions and the broader international community must now be vigilant to ensure ... minority rights in Poland are upheld in the coming years," said Dacian Ciolos, former Prime Minister of Romania and President of the Renew Europe Group in the European Parliament.

Brussels did not immediately comment on the election outcome. One EU country swiftly welcomed Duda's re-election -- Hungary, which is also among anti-liberal voices in central Europe.

"The international liberal mainstream once again tried everything but the central European right wing is up 3:0," Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook, referring to recent conservative triumphs in Croatia, which is an EU member state, and Serbia, which is not in the EU.

Warsaw mayor since 2018, Trzaskowski had said he would seek a more tolerant Poland if elected. He has criticised PiS' rhetoric, vowing to abolish state news channel TVP Info, which critics say gave overt support to Duda in its programming.

But to many religious conservatives in Poland, a predominantly Catholic nation, he came to represent the threats facing traditional values when he pledged to introduce education about LGBT rights in the city's schools.

"It's what populists do very effectively. You name the enemy and you focus on combating him. This is what was used in this campaign, the fear of others," Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist at the Warsaw University.

In the last week of campaigning, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński accused Trzaskowski of being at the centre of attempts to allow minorities to "terrorise" the rest of society.

Economic policy was also at the heart of the election, with Duda painting himself as a guardian of generous PiS welfare programmes that have transformed life for many poorer Poles since the party came to power in 2015.

PiS now faces the prospect of three years of uninterrupted rule with the next parliamentary election scheduled for 2023.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro suggested late on Sunday the party could push on quickly with its conservative agenda following the vote, and with its ambition to spur change in private media ownership towards outlets more favourable to its ambitions.

"We need to take care of the issue of values more than before," he told state broadcaster TVP. "There is also the matter of an imbalance among the media."

Some observers say Trzaskowski's strong showing could energise the opposition, which has struggled until now to formulate a cohesive narrative in the face of the PiS success in winning over many Poles with its economic and social agenda.