At the ripe old age of 11, I went on my first political protest. Squeezing my mom’s hand, I clutched my Covid mask as we joined the crowd gathering in the centre of Warsaw. Under my arm, I tucked a poster I had meticulously crafted earlier, and now raised for everyone to see. It read: ‘I AM A WOMEN. MY BODY, MY CHOICE.’ (My English has much improved since.)

It was October 2020, when the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (TK) banned nearly all legal abortions in Poland. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, welcomed the ruling. My mom found out about the protest and she was determined to go, and so was I – determined, nervous, excited and proud that I am standing up for my rights as a woman.

However, at the time I didn’t understand why our government was making decisions about our bodies, that is why I wanted change. Later, I also learned that on that day, 100,000 people took to the streets.

As we got to the front of the protest, I saw a group of men and women dressed in black. I was confused – were they a part of the protest? My mom explained that they were not; they supported the TK’s decision to limit access to abortion in Poland.

Fast forward five years, I am now 16, and Karol Nawrocki, a candidate of the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), was elected as Poland’s next president. Nawrocki is expected largely to follow Andrzej Duda’s agenda, including support for restricting legal access to abortion.

When reading about the election, I was struck by one statistic: according to Ipsos, more than 53% of the youngest voters (aged 18–39) cast their ballot in favour of Nawrocki. I realised that it was young people who helped Nawrocki into the Belweder. This brought back the people in black I saw at the protest.

I had a chance to get a better understanding when I attended the Columbia Pre-College Journalism Program this summer, during which I spoke to several voters from both sides of the political divide, as well as experts, including a political science professor and the director of the Polish Atlantic Council.

Many young voters like Nawrocki’s stance on immigration. According to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, Poland has experienced significant levels of immigration from outside the EU in recent years, in some years the highest in the EU. According to data released by Poland’s Social Insurance Office (ZUS), by the end of 2023 there were more than 1.1 million immigrants in the country, and immigrants made up 7% of people registered in ZUS’s systems.

Nawrocki promised voters to “be guided by a simple but important principle: Poland first, Poles first.” He said that Poles should not have to wait for medical appointments, while the native population should get priority placement in schools. “Polish children must have priority,” he stated.

Amelia, a 22-year-old Brown University graduate, voted for Trzaskowski. “He campaigned on keeping Poland open, democratic and aligned with European values,” she said, underlining that as mayor of Warsaw for six years, Trzaskowski supported equal rights for women, minorities and the LGBTQ+ community.

Marta, a 29-year-old analyst at one of the big-four consulting companies, said that Trzaskowski secured her vote as someone who “would represent our country in a much more professional manner”. “He is a person who carries a lot of class and a kind of professionalism in both political statements and everyday speech,” she said.

However, what appealed to Amelia and Marta did not resonate with the majority of young people, who sided with Nawrocki’s campaign, which mixed nationalist elements with emphasis on traditional and Catholic values, and their expression in public.

Alex Szczerbiak, professor of politics at the University of Sussex, explained: “[Some voters would] see the woke left as a much bigger threat to their personal freedom than the religious right, [believing] the woke left will try to cancel them in social media, which is really important to them.”

Additionally, although Nawrocki’s campaign was indirectly supported by PiS, he presented himself almost as an independent, which resulted in his ability to secure votes from the radical and extreme far-right, whose base recruits from disillusioned PiS voters. By contrast, Trzaskowski was very closely tied to the liberal Civic Platform – unmistakably liberal and progressive, he was only able to reach those voters.

Marta, who voted for Trzaskowski, says she made her choice at the polling station, but democracy involves divisions. “Whether I’m in a room today with someone who voted for Trzaskowski or with someone who voted for Nawrocki, I feel that we’ll always find common ground and shared values – we just have to be open to it.”

Five years ago, the younger version of me, the 11-year-old girl at the protest, was confused to see the counter-protestors. By 16, I learned that political beliefs are complex, and voters cannot be only explained by their age. But sometimes I think about the young girl at that protest, concerned for the rights of women and minorities in Poland, and the conservative drift of my country.

While I now better understand those Poles who want to preserve Polish traditions, and who hope for progress, in my mind I still look at these people in black I saw five years ago and hope that we’ll be able to find a middle ground, not just push the other side out.