Election preview: Poland

As we saw yesterday, Australia and New Zealand are both going to the polls tomorrow. But the big election for the weekend is on Sunday, when Poland, the fifth most populous member of the European Union, votes in judgement on its far-right government, in power since 2015.

You can read my report here on the last Polish election, in 2019; it also explains the voting system, which is proportional within relatively small regions with a high (5%) national threshold, thus giving a strong advantage to larger parties. Previewing that election, I tried to assess its significance:

So this election is not – fingers crossed – in the nature of a last stand for Polish democracy. But if Law & Justice gets a second term, it will be seen, not unreasonably, as a repudiation by Poland’s voters of the Enlightenment values that are under siege around the world.

And so, more or less, it has turned out. The government of Jarosław Kaczyński (Mateusz Morawiecki is prime minister, but Kaczyński as party leader is the real boss) has remained an outlier in European terms without ever quite becoming a pariah. The EU would love to see it replaced – particularly since the opposition leader, Donald Tusk, is himself a former EU president – but it has learnt to compromise with Law & Justice where necessary, especially since the war in Ukraine has put Poland in the front line. And unlike many of his far-right counterparts, Kaczyński has never been close to Vladimir Putin.

Law & Justice won a majority (235 of the 460 lower-house seats) last time with 43.6% of the vote. Against it were three opposition tickets, which between them were about five points ahead, on 48.5%, but won in aggregate only 213 seats: Civic Coalition (centrist; 27.4% and 134 seats), the Left, now called the New Left (centre-left; 12.6% and 49), and Polish Coalition, now called Third Way (8.6% and 30).

Although there are some major differences between them, there’s not much doubt that the three opposition groups will co-operate to unseat Law & Justice if they jointly win a majority. And that’s well within the bounds of possibility: the opinion polls have them on track to win around 50% of the vote in total, more than ten points clear of Law & Justice.

More likely is that the opposition, with the electoral system working against it, will finish in the lead but without a majority. In that case, the balance of power would be held by the further-right ticket, Confederation, which in 2019 won 6.8% of the vote and 11 seats* and is currently polling a little above that. It is hostile to both the other blocs; it is more racist and Europhobic than Law & Justice, and (unlike it) is pro-Russian and rhetorically pro-market.

Neither side would be happy about relying on Confederation, but if needed it would probably provide the votes to keep Law & Justice in power – although no doubt it would keep Kaczyński on a short leash. Alternatively, it’s possible that Third Way (or at least part of it; all the tickets are really broad coalitions) would be willing to deal with Law & Justice in order to keep Confederation out.

Even if the opposition wins a majority, it will not be easy for Tusk to unmake Kaczyński’s autocratic state. Law & Justice has entrenched itself in the organs of government, and a three-fifths majority would be necessary to override the veto of president Andrzej Duda, whose term has almost two more years to run. But it would greatly improve relations with the EU and be a big boost for democracy in a year in which it’s taken some battering.

Polls close at 6am Monday, eastern Australian summer time, so results should come in during the course of the morning. There is some controversy about whether votes from overseas (which favor the opposition) will all be counted in time.

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* Alert readers will notice that those totals only add to 459; the final seat was won by the party representing the ethnic German community, which is exempt from the 5% threshold.