Nearly 30 percent of eligible voters took part in Sunday’s referendum, which had a 26.98 percent validity threshold. Of those who voted, 97.93 percent backed removing the mayor, while just under 2.1 percent opposed it. In a post on X, Miszalski accepted the results, emphasizing “local democracy is precisely about residents having the final say.”
“Not everything was achieved as I had intended,” he added. “I also know that some decisions, and the emotions surrounding them, caused many residents to lose trust in me.”
The referendum results represent a major victory for PiS and Confederation, who are casting the recall in Kraków as the first in a broader campaign to challenge liberal urban governments. Tusk’s Civic Coalition party controls the capital city Warsaw and the majority of regional capitals, and by taking aim at the local administrations, Poland’s right-wing sees a way of challenging the prime minister’s rule at the national level.
In a rare post on X, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński hailed the results in Kraków, which he said were “only the beginning.”
“This government is destroying and questioning everything democratic,” he wrote. “That is why the people of Kraków showed them the red card. I congratulate all Kraków residents who refused to be intimidated and are fighting for their city.”
A pre-referendum survey by pollster OGB found that more than 28 percent of voters cited the city’s Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) — a system introduced by Miszalski’s center-left predecessor Jacek Majchrowski, to limit polluting vehicles access to Kraków — as their top grievance. Even though Kraków’s residents are exempt from the zone’s rules, campaigners succeeded in presenting the scheme as an undue burden on “ordinary” citizens.
