National Conservatives win elections in Poland

The ruling national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party is leading the parliamentary elections in Poland. This is evidenced by exit poll data from Ipsos.

According to them, PiS wins 36.8% of the vote, which gives them 200 seats in Poland’s 460-seat Sejm. PiS’s closest rival, the opposition Civic Coalition, led by the center-right Civic Platform party, received 31.6% of the vote and 163 seats in parliament.

The center-right Third Way coalition and the left, possible allies of the Civic Platform within the coalition, received 13% and 8.6% of the votes, respectively (55 and 30 mandates). The electoral threshold for elections to the Polish parliament is 5% for political parties and 8% for coalitions.

The turnout for the elections was a record 57.54%, as announced at a press conference by the Deputy Chairman of the State Election Commission of Poland Sylvester Marciniak. For comparison, in 2019 the turnout for the Seimas elections was only 45.94%.

The final election results will become clear on Monday 16 October.

The national conservatives from PiS have been in power since 2015. If PiS wins and the ruling coalition is successfully created in Poland, an unprecedented situation will arise when one party manages to win elections three times in a row.

In parallel with the elections, PiS organized a referendum in which citizens were invited to express their views on issues of migration, raising the retirement age and the privatization of state property. The referendum was declared invalid because, with the required turnout of 50%, only 40% of Polish voters voted.

In any case, there is no need to talk about a clear victory for PiS or the opposition – in the event of victory, either side will have to assemble a coalition, says Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, senior researcher at IMEMO RAS. The turnout for the elections is record, and the votes of more liberal-minded Poles abroad will help the Civic Platform gain significant numbers.

And even if an unprecedented situation arises and PiS wins for the third time, the coalition it has put together will involve much more compromise on the part of national conservatives, the expert summarizes.