WARSAW, Poland — A pro-market legislator and Warsaw's socially conservative mayor appeared headed for a runoff in Poland's presidential election yesterday after neither candidate appeared to have gained the 50 percent of the vote needed, according to preliminary results and a key exit poll.

With 91.5 percent of the ballots counted, 36 percent of voters had backed Donald Tusk, a pro-business candidate committed to stimulating entrepreneurship with low taxes and deregulation; 33 percent voted for Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski, a former child actor hoping to preserve a strong safety net, according to the state electoral commission. Turnout was nearly 50 percent.

If the results hold, the two former activists with the anti-Communist Solidarity movement would be forced into a runoff Oct. 23.

The race centered on the Europewide issue of just how far to go in sacrificing old welfare-state protections for the promise of a U.S.-style economy.

Final results were not expected until today.

The winner of the presidential race will replace Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Voter apathy has Polish democracy icon Lech Walesa wondering aloud if his fight to throw off the shackles of totalitarian rule was wasted on his countrymen.

The founding member of the Gdansk shipyard union, which helped topple Poland's communist rulers, said he was furious about the low voter turnout.

"When I fought for democracy, I thought my compatriots would use it, but now I wonder — what was all this suffering for, these searches, beatings, arrests?" Walesa told public television.

"We should have kept the Soviets around — the commies, the riot cops, the truncheons — maybe it didn't last long enough and that's why people have made this decision [not to vote]," Walesa said.