WARSAW, Oct. 22 — Voters appeared to have ousted the prime minister, one half of Poland’s wonder-twin team, in parliamentary elections on Sunday. The challenger, Donald Tusk, declared victory for his pro-business party, Civic Platform.
The prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, conceded defeat as two major exit polls showed his Law and Justice Party trailing Civic Platform by double-digit margins. His brother, Lech, will remain president and retain veto power over the presumptive new government’s legislation.
Official results are not expected until Tuesday. They could determine whether Civic Platform achieves an outright majority or, as is more likely, needs to form a coalition with the centrist Polish Peasants Party. Though the results were still unofficial, Mr. Kaczynski congratulated his opponent after what appeared to be a significant defeat.
“It was a battle,” Mr. Tusk told supporters gathered here Sunday night. “We won it. But tomorrow we need to get down to work.”
Surveys showed that this election had the highest rate of voter participation since the fall of Communism in 1989. Some polling stations ran out of ballots, which kept several open up to three hours later than scheduled.
Leaders across Europe were likely to be relieved at the ascension of Civic Platform, a pro-Europe party. Under the Kaczynskis, Poland has earned a reputation as a consensus-breaking troublemaker.
On the other hand, the Kaczynskis have been the staunchest of allies of the United States. Mr. Tusk said during the campaign that he would have driven a harder bargain over support of plans to place missile interceptors on Polish soil and that, if elected, he would try to bring home the 900 Polish troops in Iraq.
With 38 million residents, Poland is the largest former communist country in the European Union. Civic Platform stands for tax cuts and the continued liberalization of the economy through privatization.
Law and Justice appeared to be a formidable opponent, especially given the support of the influential Catholic radio station, Radio Maryja, which experts here said could alone deliver around 1.5 million votes for the party, just over half the 2.9 million that Civic Platform managed when it was narrowly defeated by Law and Justice in elections two years ago.
But turnout was abysmal in that election, barely 40 percent. A survey by the PBS public opinion institute put participation Sunday at 55.3 percent. “It’s much higher than we all expected,” said Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, director of the Institute of Public Affairs, an independent research organization in Warsaw, attributing the surge to surprisingly high youth participation. “This is a generation revolution.”
Paulina Gdula, out for a walk with her fianc? in Garwolin, a small town 40 miles east of Warsaw, after voting in her first election, said, “Young people should have some influence over what is happening in this country.”
On a bright cold autumn Sunday in Poland, three generations of the Rekawek family set out for their polling place in the village of Michalowka, just outside Garwolin.
“They wanted to do a lot for the country, but other parties didn’t let them,” said the mayor, Krystyna Rekawek, referring to the Kaczynskis. “They did not have enough time to do what they wanted,” she added, because elections were called two years early after the Kaczynskis’ governing coalition fell apart this summer.
A Law and Justice victory would have meant “no change, just quarreling and fighting all over again,” said her son, Tomasz Rekawek.
In Garwolin’s town square, an older man responded to questions about the election by raising a fist and shouting, “Ducks,” a local nickname for the twins.
“I prefer my ducks boiled in a pot,” said a friend sitting beside him.
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