May-poll dance: Poland’s presidential race

0:28The Economist pounds. But another medicine could soon be eating Wagovi's lunch. Our correspondent choose over which pharmaceutical company might get to have their cake and make money from it. And you know that thing where people seem to look a lot like their dogs? Some German researchers decided to put the weight of scientific inquiry behind that notion, and now they have data. It's not your imagination, and it's not a coincidence.

1:01First up, though.

1:10In Poland, presidents can rarely impose their own agendas, but they can certainly frustrate the governments. Just ask Prime Minister Donald Tusk. He came to power in 2023 in coalition with Greens, Liberals, and Leftists. This was after years of rule by the Law and Justice Party, which had gleefully dismantled Poland's institutions and civil services. Yet for all the reforms that Mr. Tusk promised, he repeatedly locked horns with Andrzej Duda, a law and justice politician who's now been president for a decade. Time's up for Mr. Duda, though. So who will replace him? It's not just that frequent question of how the populist right is doing.

1:53Poland is on NATO's front line. Its integration into Europe, in particular its changing defense posture, matters perhaps more now than ever. Mr. Tusk's preferred candidate, Rafał Truskowski, might get his agenda back on track, while Karol Nowrodzki, backed by the Law and Justice Party, would represent more deadlock, Euroscepticism, uncertainty. And, as one of our news editors, Maria Vilcek, found yesterday during the poll's first round, it's going to be tight. It wasn't really a surprise that Rafael Traskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, came first. But I think the margin, just how slim it was, that was the real surprise.

2:36It was always unlikely that there would be a winner in the first round. But now the runoff, which will determine who will become the president and also whether the prime minister, Donald Tusk, will be able to implement his reforms, that looks a lot closer. So you say that the story here is in the numbers. Let's run through them real quick as they are at the moment. According to the partial numbers published overnight, Rafał Trzaskowski is forecast to get 31.2 % of the vote. And then his national conservative opponent, Karol Nawrowski, is predicted to get 29.7 % of the votes just behind him. And then in third place, Swabovine Menton, who is a far-right libertarian, had a surprisingly strong showing with almost 15 % of the vote.

3:25Then behind them, there is a bunch of 10 other candidates, each receiving a small share of the vote. But that really shows that there is a lot of disillusionment with the two main parties, just because how thinly these numbers have been spread. Slaskovsky and Nawrotsky will go up against each other in a runoff on June 1st. And Maria, let's talk about those two frontrunners then. Introduce us to these candidates. Ravolt Shostkowski is the deputy leader of Donald Tusk's governing center-right civic platform. He wants closer ties with the EU. So in the past, he served as a Secretary of State for European Affairs, which means he has excellent contacts across the continent.

4:07And many voters that I spoke with yesterday told me that they were supporting him precisely because they were scared that Poland would leave the EU otherwise. And he was the favorite to win. but perhaps after last night's uncomfortably close results, he may not be anymore. That may now be Karol Nawrotsky. He's more of an unknown political quantity. He's a historian who was selected by the Conservative Law and Justice Party, the one that had been booted out of power 17 months ago. His role would probably be to lay the groundwork for the party to win back power in the parliamentary elections in 2027.

4:46In his speech yesterday, he said that he wanted to stop Donald Tusk from getting all the power. And his supporters told me that they believe that Mr. Tusk's government is indeed too friendly with European allies and what they consider to be a federalist European Union, to the point of actually risking Poland's own sovereignty. so he has positioned Mr. Noworowski has positioned himself as the candidate who would be better suited to work with Donald Trump and improve and diversify Poland's foreign policy away from the EU to improve ties with America and his party has tried to make this election a referendum on Mr.

5:29Tusk's government which has failed to deliver on many of its electoral promises and as a result has become quite unpopular. And for your part, you were at Mr. Noworski's election party last night. I presume it was a fairly triumphant mood. Yes, there was a countdown as the exit poll was released at 9pm. Go, say, say, say! There was loud cheering in the room. People were shouting, we will win, we will win. and then he was introduced as the future president of Poland by the MC.

6:11He sounded quite confident, quite happy, upbeat in his speech. At the end of it, he made an appeal to the far right, to those who had voted for Sławomir Męcen.

6:31saying that they shared a common interest in saving Poland, in making it more safe, strong and prosperous. And a lot of the politicians and activists in the room also felt quite confident that Nawrowski could flip the numbers and in two weeks' time could actually come out top. I'm very positive and optimistic about it. You know, the guys, the bright view, the bright wind of possibilities this for Poland. I think that this is good to move. The Polish society thinks that probably the future is for us. And you mentioned that the dynamic here is really about Donald Tusk's government reforms, the degree to which they haven't come as quickly as voters had hoped, presumably attempting to undo what the previous Law and Justice Party had done.

7:22Last year, we heard about just how much had been done to weaken the country's institutions. Is that really what voters are thinking about now rather than anything else. Yes, that will be a very important thing playing on many voters' minds. Over eight years in power, law and justice had turned public media into crude government propaganda. They had politicized the civil service. They had packed the courts with loyalist judges. And then the Tusk government had promised to overturn all of that and to push through some liberal reforms, most importantly to loosen Poland's draconian abortion laws. But progress on all of those counts has been very slow.

7:59And that is in large part because the incumbent president, Andriy Duda, has blocked around two dozen of the government's bills. Tosk has resorted to some questionable methods to take back control, for example, of the public media. But many government supporters think that what would really help is to have a president who would see eye to eye with the government and that would allow for him to pave the way for those changes. whereas a victory for Nawrotsky would possibly be a fatal blow for the Tuska government. And, of course, kind of unknowable, but what's your view? What do you think will happen in two weeks' time, given the surprise that brings us to this point?

8:37So it's very difficult to predict the distribution of how those who didn't vote for one of the main two candidates will then decide to go. Supporters of left-wing parties will probably back the more liberal of the two, Nawrotsky. Traskovsky. However, it's less clear what those who voted for the far-right candidates will do. They accounted for almost 21 % of the vote share in the first round, and you'd think that many of them would back the conservative, Karol Nawrotsky, with whom they share many values. But for the libertarians in that group, his camp socialist economic agenda is hard to swallow.

9:13Traskovsky will be hoping that they'd swing his way because of that, but instead many of them might just stay home on June 1st, and that means the election is effectively a toss-up. Maria, thanks very much for your time. Thanks, Jason.

9:40Discover the power of Wegovy. With Wegovy, I lost 35 pounds. And some lost over 46 pounds. Many people who want to slim down have replaced diets with drugs. Wagovi was the first of a new generation of weight loss jabs, and it's made billions for Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. But recently, things have been looking a bit sour for the company. Its share price has been falling, and on Friday, its chief executive Lars Vrugard-Jorgensen stepped down. Despite its early advantage, other firms are coming for Novo Nordisk's lunch. Z-Bound, which is the weight loss product made by Eli Lilly, was approved for sale in America in November of 2023.

10:29Shalas Chitnis is our global business writer. In 2024, which is its first full year of sales, it made almost$5 billion in revenue, which was more than half of what Vegovie made that year, which is around$8 billion. Really a very fast catch-up if you think about a new drug to market that's not been done before. Novo has actually cut its sales forecast for this year because they've cited lower than planned growth. And so very clearly the momentum is with Lilly. And analysts expect that by 2027, Lilly will actually overtake Novo in its portfolio of weight loss drugs. So what's happened? What is Novo Nordisk doing wrong?

11:07There are a couple of different things. So first and foremost is Lilly's drug is just a lot more effective, they've executed better, and they have a much stronger pipeline in terms of new drugs that are coming to market. So to start with the effectiveness, the guiding metric with weight loss drugs is what is the average weight loss for a cohort of patients that go through clinical trials. And before getting to this, just to kind of let our listeners know that when talking about these weight loss drugs, there are new kind of weight loss drugs that didn't exist before. They belong to a section called GLP-1 agonists, which is essentially GLP is a gut hormone.

11:44And what these weight loss drugs do is they minimize the rate at which your stomach empties so you feel fuller for much longer. Now, Vegovie, which is the first to market, mimics the GLP-1 hormone. ZepBound actually targets GLP-1 and an additional hormone called GIP. The dual action that ZEPBound has has been shown to be a lot more effective. And because of this, in the first quarter of this year, ZEPBound made up almost 60 % of total weight loss prescriptions in America and almost three quarters of the new ones. And these drugs are really popular. To give you some sense of context, in America, while the exact number of people that use these medicines is not known, I've seen surveys that actually mentioned somewhere between one in 10 Americans have used these medicines and an even higher proportion are interested in getting access to them if the price is lower.

12:35So obviously being more effective is a great start. You said the pipeline of Lily's drugs are also better. That's true. So it's not just about VEGOV and ZEB bound. What the market is really interested in is what's coming down the pipe as well. The biggest excitement is around the oral drugs. So both VEGOV and ZEB bound are injectables. They need to be taken by patients every week as long as they are on the medicines. Now, orals, as you can imagine, are a lot simpler than injecting yourself every week. And Lily has a pretty promising oral pill that is going through late stage trials right now, which is once a day pill.

13:13And in clinical trials so far, it has shown to have the same efficacy as VEGOVs. Now, the reason there's a lot of excitement around orals, as I talked about, it's easier for patients to take. But if you think about it, it also opens up a whole new market globally. When you're talking about countries like India, countries in Latin America or Africa, the core supply chain that is required to be able to carry these biologics is not there. And that's where orals make a lot of sense. So suddenly you see there's a whole new market that's going to open up fully based on the oral pills as well. And how do they compare on price?

13:48So today, ZepBound is around 20 % cheaper than Vegovie at a list price basis in America. But there's a huge difference between list price and what the insurer ends up paying. And so it's very hard to tell, but typically the rebates are around 50%. But on a list price basis, ZepBound is priced at 20 % discount to Wegovi. Now, what Eli Lilly has also done is they have been a lot more flexible in terms of experimenting with new ways to reach the consumer. So they launched a direct-to-consumer website called Lilly Direct, through which patients that have a prescription for these weight loss medicines can get a low dose version for only$3.99.

14:29And so that has been pretty interesting in terms of getting uptake for people who are not covered by insurance to be able to access these medicines as well. Shalish, as you say, the US market is growing, the global market is growing, probably the wrong metaphor, but isn't there enough pie to go around for two companies here? Well, it certainly is, because even when we are talking about really taking the lead, Keep in mind that at least until 2030, both companies have a duopoly on this market with Lilly having a 47 % share, Novo having a 40 % share of what is expected to be a$90 billion plus market.

15:05So pretty large numbers. Now, having said that, there are a few concerns. The first and foremost is pricing. So a lot of patients get these medicines through insurance and insurance coverage has been patchy. And so the price of this drug has been an ongoing discussion. Donald Trump continues to push these drug makers in terms of lowering their prices, and that could have a drag on their revenue. The second issue is, of course, tariffs, as it is the case with most of the markets right now. Donald Trump is pushing pharmaceutical companies to onshore a lot of their manufacturing in America. Now, Eli Lilly has pledged most recently almost $27 billion over the next four years to set up poor plants in America.

15:46But any kind of manufacturing plant takes at least three to four years to set up. And even then, it's not entirely possible to onshore your entire supply chain. And so that is going to remain a challenge based on how the tariffs end up going. Now, having said all this, I think the bigger story with weight loss drugs in the coming few years is going to be the access that a huge segment of the population in China, in India, and in other developing countries are going to get with these medicines, both with orals, but with also genetics potentially coming online by 2026, 2027. In terms of revenue, I still expect America to be the biggest contributor to these companies.

16:26But in terms of impact, I think that is where a lot of interesting things are going to happen in terms of the societal impact of these medicines. Shalash, fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

16:53Come on. Since I got my dog, Rocco, last year, we've been inseparable. David Adam writes about science for The Economist. He's a border collie, so he's very active. He loves being outdoors and walks and swimming. You could say that we're pretty similar in that regard. But not everybody clicks with their dog in the same way The relationship between dogs and their owners is something that scientists in Germany have been looking into They've discovered that as well as looking like each other dogs and their owners can have similar personalities as well David, this sounds barking to me How has anyone been actually trying to show that dogs are similar to their owners?

17:40Researchers at the Max Planck Institute, led by a PhD student called Yana Bender, have been looking into this. They're interested in making better matches between people and guide dogs. It costs a fortune to train a guide dog, about$50 ,000. But in about a third of cases, the dog that is allocated to somebody just isn't suitable. Maybe there's a conflict, maybe there's a clash, and the dog has to be returned. The researchers are trying to understand why that happens and to try and prevent it happening. And as part of that, they've just looked at all the different studies that people have previously done to try and get at this question.

18:20You can show people photographs of dogs and of owners mixed up and you can ask people to pair them. This has been done many times and the results are pretty consistent. people are able to match dogs to their owners more often than if they were just guessing. And how do they do that exactly? There are some features which seem to go together. For example, women with short hair seem to choose dogs with shorter ears and longer-eared dogs tend to be chosen by women with longer hair. People who have high body mass indexes are more likely to have dogs that are on the larger side. With personalities as well, scientists can say to them, how would you rate yourself on this scale?

19:05And they find that the personality traits are mirrored. Introverted people tend to have dogs who are nervous around strangers. People who are, and this is the personality term, neurotic, are more likely to have aggressive pets. And owners of dangerous breeds of dogs rate themselves higher on traits like psychopathy. okay so psychopaths have psychopathic dogs i can just about get behind that one but what's the theory here is it that people pick dogs like them or that dogs become more like their owners i think with appearances the theory is that people choose dogs that look like them there's a well-known psychological bias where we tend to trust and value and think more highly of both people and animals that look like us.

19:54Now with the personalities, it's not quite as simple because it's very difficult to judge a dog's personality from the moment you meet it. There's also a degree of influencing going on in both directions. So an owner's behavior can shape a dog over time and vice versa. For example, if the owner is not very confident when they're out with the dog, the dog can pick up on that and the dog can become more nervous perhaps around people. And equally, if you have an anxious dog, that can make the owner more concerned about where they go, how it behaves, and it can influence the behaviour of the owner, at least certainly when it's with the dog.

20:34I feel like we're setting up some enterprising soul for a kind of overpriced version of dog Tinder, Forever Friends or whatever. But I'm interested beyond the guide dog situation, how often does dog divorce actually happen? Well, I think we know human divorce is quite common. And indeed, some of the dynamics at play here, we do see mirrored in human relationships. So married couples really do become more similar over time. Their personalities merge a little bit. And interestingly, actually, the researchers in Germany, they asked people with guide dogs to describe the relationship they had with the dogs and the good points and the bad points.

21:11For example, there was one owner of a guide dog who said the dog was too meticulous for me. It just didn't match my personality. Another one said the dog didn't like the same kind of music. And so that was cause for a breakup. And then very kind of sadly, in a way, there was one guide dog owner who had a guide dog they were very happy with and the guide dog passed away and they got a new one and it just didn't compare. So although some of these trusted friends might be difficult to replace, I think there are lessons here in how we go about selecting and choosing them in the first place. As a non-dog owner, I never realized love was quite so complicated.

21:48Thank you, David. Great to talk to you. Thank you.

22:09That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you.