Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk was heading for an unprecedented second mandate on Sunday, according to exit polls in his country's general election.
If the actual count turns out his way, the pro-European, free market-minded centrist will make history by becoming the first incumbent prime minister to be returned to office since the demise of Poland's communist regime in 1989.
Tusk, now 54, was propelled into power in a 2007 snap election by voters fed up with a fractious coalition led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski of the conservative Law and Justice party.
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Tusk's Civic Platform has held all the levers of power since July 2010, when its candidate Bronislaw Komorowski beat Kaczynski in a presidential poll caused by the death of his twin, head of state Lech Kaczynski, in a plane crash in Russia.
TUSK'S COMEBACK
In the 2005 presidential polls, Tusk had suffered a humiliating and largely unexpected defeat at the hands of Lech Kaczynski, just weeks after Civic Platform lost a general election to Law and Justice.
After that blow, Tusk had trouble convincing his party that he deserved to remain the boss, in part because of his inability to hit back at the Kaczynskis, known for their hardball style.
Since bouncing back in 2007, the urbane Tusk has worked to repair Kaczynski-era rifts with European Union allies, notably Germany, and also tried to rebuild ties with communist-era master Moscow.
He has taken a firm line on Poland's national interests, however, questioning eurozone bailouts and declining to set an adoption target for the euro currency.
His mandate has been capped by Warsaw's six-month presidency of the 27-nation EU.
With 38 million people, the 2004 EU entrant is the bloc's largest newcomer, and has been eager to punch its weight.
Tusk, a confirmed economic liberal since his youth, is proud of a stewardship in which Poland was the only EU nation to maintain growth during the global crisis.
JOURNALIST'S BACKGROUND
An underground journalist during communist rule, when he studied history, Tusk was far more than a theoretician, because he also ran an industrial painting firm - small companies were rare, but tolerated by the regime.
After 1989, he and a group of friends in his Baltic Sea hometown of Gdansk founded the Liberal Democratic Congress to push for sweeping privatisation of the state-run economy.
In 1991's elections, it won 37 seats in Poland's 460-seat lower house. After losing them two years later, it merged with the larger Freedom Union.
Tusk led a breakaway in 2001 and formed the Civic Platform.
In line with his economic thinking, he is an admirer of the late US president Ronald Reagan and Britain's former premier Margaret Thatcher.
He has also been a faithful supporter of Lech Walesa, the former Gdansk shipyard electrician who led the communist-era opposition trade union Solidarity and was elected president in 1990.
Tusk is a proud Kashubian - a Slav minority from the Gdansk region - and has been at the forefront of a cultural revival which has reversed years of decline.
He only discovered his roots as an adult, prompting him to learn the language and later write the first textbook for would-be Kashubian-speakers.
A keen footballer, he is married to historian Malgorzata Tusk and has two adult children, one of whom is a well-known fashion blogger.
