Over 99% of votes have been counted, and PiS leads with 35.64%, while Tusk’s Civic Coalition party has 30.48%.

However, Tusk now has the best chance of forming a broad coalition.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s eight-year rule would come to an end with that.

On Tuesday, the National Electoral Commission will announce the final results. Mr Kaczynski will fall short of the 231 seats he needs to form a majority parliament, the Sejm, even if the winning party is offered the chance to govern.

In a final exit poll published on Monday, the far-right Confederation would leave the socially conservative PiS 20 seats short.

On Sunday night, Donald Tusk said, “This is the end of the bad times, the end of the PiS government.”

Poles had already been warned that it was their “last chance” to save democracy. In 1989, the National Election Commission reported the highest turnout since the fall of communism, 74%.

In Warsaw, Mr Tusk told a large crowd of jubilant supporters: “Poland won, democracy won.”

It is likely that he will form a coalition government with the centre-right Third Way with around 14.4% of the vote, and the New Left with around 8.5%. With 249 seats in the 460-seat parliament, they would easily reach a majority.

On the expectation of a new government, Poland’s stock market surged by more than 6%, and its currency, the Zloty, also gained.