Polish citizens in East to vote in presidential election

More than 3,000 Polish people based in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire are eligible to vote in the nation's presidential election.

The first round of voting is on Sunday, with polling stations located in Bedford, Dunstable, Watford and Welwyn Hatfield.

The president is elected for five years using the two-round system, meaning that if no candidate gets 50% of the vote in the first round this weekend, then a second round will take place on 1 June.

Presidents can only be re-elected once, meaning incumbent Andrzej Duda of the Law and Justice party has stood down, and the country's seventh president will be elected in his place.

In 2023, when Poland held its last local elections, a record 608,000 voters from outside the country were registered as an estimated five million Polish citizens now live abroad.

That includes 700,000 in the UK, and there will be more than 100 different places to vote across the country.

The Polish community is the largest white non-British group in Hertfordshire followed by Italians and Irish.

In Bedfordshire, the 2021 census had Polish as the second most represented nationality after English in Bedford.

In Luton, 7,823 people had Polish as their first language, which is 3.5% of the total population and in Central Bedfordshire 0.6% of residents were born in Poland.

In 2021, 1.5% of Milton Keynes residents were born in Poland, according to the Office for National Statistics, which equates to about 4,000-5,000 residents.

There are two polling stations on Victoria Street in Dunstable, one at Dom Polski (The Polish House) in Bedford, one at a primary school in Welwyn Hatfield and also at Watford Leisure Centre in Peace Prospect.

There are 13 candidates registered for the election and a result is expected on Monday, which will either be an outright winner, or the announcement of a run-off to be held between the top two contenders on 1 June.

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