‘We passed the democracy exam’ Poland’s long-ruling conservative party lost its majority, but the liberal opposition isn’t out of the woods just yet
Poland’s October 15 parliamentary election results, which saw the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party lose its majority for the first time in eight years, greatly relieved Polish liberals, the E.U., and Washington alike. But even if it manages to form a ruling coalition (no simple task), the new governing alliance will have a multitude of crises to address, both on the domestic front and in the country’s relations with the E.U. and Ukraine. Meanwhile, PiS says it’s determined to create obstacles for the new leaders. Meduza explains how Poland’s opposition parties beat the odds and won — and what the country’s future likely holds.
A victory too small to govern
On the morning of October 17, Poland’s National Electoral Commission announced the final results of the country’s parliamentary elections. In the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, the incumbent conservative party, PiS, clinched the top position with 35.38 percent of votes. It was the party’s third consecutive victory in parliamentary elections.
Second place went to PiS’s biggest rival, the liberal Civic Coalition alliance, which received 30.7 percent of votes. A centrist coalition, Third Way, received 14.4 percent, while the alliance The Left won 8.61 percent. The final party to make it over the five percent threshold to enter parliament was the far-right Confederation party, which won 7.16 percent.
This left PiS with 194 of the Sejm’s 460 seats — far fewer than the 231 it needs for a majority, even if it joins forces with Confederation.
Meanwhile, among the opposition, Civic Coalition won 157 seats, Third Way won 65, and The Left won 26, giving the country’s top three opposition parties a total of 248 seats in parliament. If the parties manage to reach a coalition agreement, they’ll be able to form and confirm a government. All of them declared putting an end to PiS’s rule to be their goal before the elections.
The opposition also pulled out a majority in the parliament’s upper house, the Senate, though this was nothing new. In the last elections, in 2019, opposition parties won two more seats than PiS (51 out of 100); this time, they managed to win 65.
When 66-year-old Civic Coalition leader Donald Tusk learned the preliminary election results, he said he had never been so happy to win second place. “We won democracy. We won freedom. We won our free, beloved Poland,” he told supporters later that night.
“We, the people, have passed the democracy exam with flying colors,” wrote Szymon Hołownia, the head of the party Poland 2050 and one of the leaders of the Third Way coalition, on Facebook. Robert Biedroń, another left-wing political leader, said that October 15 marked the “end of [the rule of] PiS.” Unsurprisingly, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński disagreed, vowing to his supporters that the party won’t let its opponents “betray Poland,” even as an opposition force.
Voter mobilization pays off
Voter turnout in this election exceeded 74 percent — the highest in Poland’s modern history. There were reports of long lines at polling stations in cities across the country.
In 2019, when Poland last held parliamentary elections, cities with populations above 500,000 people tended to support the liberal Civic Coalition party. Warsaw saw the highest proportion of people voting for left-wing parties. Meanwhile, the conservative PiS party found widespread support among people in smaller cities and rural areas.
This time around, judging from an exit-poll analysis by the independent outlet OKO.press, the pattern repeated itself, but PiS won by a slimmer margin in rural areas.
Meanwhile, this vote was an unqualified success for the Third Way coalition, which has only existed since April 2023. The alliance received more than 14 percent of votes, despite pre-election surveys indicating it was at risk of not overcoming the five percent threshold.
Third Way’s platform is largely similar to that of Civic Coalition. The alliance’s founder, Szymon Hołownia, founded the party Poland 2050 in 2020 as an alternative option for moderate voters who have grown tired of both PiS and Civic Coalition, which have dominated electoral politics in the country since 2005. Hołownia’s partner in the coalition is the more traditional Polish People’s Party.
Voters in this election largely rejected parties on the more extreme ends of the spectrum. The far-right Confederation party received approximately 7 percent of votes, despite more than 12 percent of respondents in an August poll saying they planned to vote for it. Confederation targets young voters while supporting some libertarian economic policies, advocating for a total ban on abortions, and opposing LGBTQ+ rights. According to Przemysław Sadura, a sociology professor at the University of Warsaw, this combination is unappealing primarily to young people, who find it incoherent.
At the same time, according to Polish journalist Kaja Puto, the underwhelming performance of the party The Left was partly due to the standoff between PiS and Civic Coalition. Before campaign season began, The Left was the country’s main defender of left-wing policies, advocating against abortion bans while questioning the church’s influence on society and campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights. But because Tusk’s Civic Coalition had to campaign against conservatives in the leadup to the election, the party’s platforms shifted leftwards, siphoning voters away from The Left.
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Another thorn in the liberals’ side
Civil Coalition leader Donald Tusk, who’s now tasked with forming a liberal coalition and creating a government, is an experienced politician and negotiator. Both he and Szymon Hołownia, who’s likely to be his partner in this endeavor, have said they expect to be able to form a coalition quickly and with no significant problems.
But the conservative PiS party could still throw a wrench in the opposition’s plans: In Poland, it’s the president’s job to entrust the winning party with forming a government, and the current president, Andrzej Duda, is a former member of PiS. In theory, he can initially give the mandate to form a cabinet of ministers to the party that won the elections, which would delay the cabinet’s formation.
Current Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has already said that PiS will try to form a government. “If the president entrusts the winning party with this mission, we will try to build a stable government that will navigate Poland through the challenges it faces,” Morawiecki vowed, adding that addressing the country’s problems will only be possible with a “stable ruling coalition, not a diverse opposition with no common platform except their hatred for PiS.”
PiS campaign chief Joachim Brudziński did not rule out the possibility that the party might try to convince the Polish People’s Party (PPP), which is more conservative and more inclined to compromise than its current allies, to abandon the coalition. PPP leader Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, however, has already rejected the idea of forming a coalition with PiS and has emphasized that the voters who supported his party want to remove conservatives from power.
Undoing years of reforms
For the eight years that PiS was in power, the opposition and the E.U. criticized the party for giving the government significantly more power to regulate state television broadcasters, judicial reform, and imposing what was effectively a full abortion ban in 2021. But even without PiS in charge of the government, tackling the problems that have arisen as a result of these laws still presents challenges, according to Reuters and The Financial Times.
While campaigning, Donald Tusk promised to restore the independence of state broadcaster TVP “within 24 hours” of forming a new government. To do this, however, Tusk will have to find a legal way to dismiss the head of the agency without the approval of the country’s National Media Council (which is dominated by PiS members). Changing the composition of the council would require passing a separate law, which would first need to be approved by parliament and then signed by the president, who has supported all of the reforms that the new coalition will be seeking to undo. Reversing the conservatives’ judicial reform, too, will be impossible without Duda’s cooperation.
Changing abortion legislation may also pose difficulties — not just because of the president’s position but also because of differing views among potential coalition members. While campaigning, Tusk promised that Civic Platform would introduce a bill to allow Polish women to have abortions up to 12 weeks with no restrictions. Meanwhile, the party’s coalition partner, Third Way (which includes the conservative Polish People’s Party), wants to hold a referendum on the issue. Third Way’s leader, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, said after the October 15 election that coalition negotiations should not decide issues of ideology.
At the same time, the new coalition is unlikely to reverse certain foreign policy decisions made by the previous government. This applies first and foremost to Poland’s military and political support for Ukraine. According to the results of surveys conducted by the company IPSOS for the independent outlet OKO.press and the radio station TOK.FM, 74 percent of Poles support continued active support for Ukraine. The party with the highest proportion of Ukraine supporters is Civic Coalition, in which 88 percent of survey respondents were in favor of the policy. None of Civic Coalition’s potential partners opposes military aid to Ukraine.
The victorious opposition coalition has also declared its intention to improve relations with the E.U., which deteriorated during PiS’s rule. This means that Poland’s new government is unlikely to alter its Ukraine policy as long as Brussels and influential E.U. member states are inclined to continue supporting Kyiv. At the same time, Donald Tusk has stated that he views aid to Ukraine as an investment that will allow Poland to take part in the country’s reconstruction after the war ends. Tusk’s reluctance to frame this aid as an act of charity is likely a response to popular opinion in Poland: according to the same IPSOS poll cited above, 42 percent of Poles opposed the idea of continued social support for Ukrainian refugees after January 1, 2024.
After the government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki imposed an embargo on importing Ukrainian grain in September, Tusk announced a plan to “stabilize” Polish-Ukrainian relations. He later stressed that he intends for Warsaw’s support for Ukraine to benefit Poland, such as by attracting European funding for various infrastructure projects (notably, grain transit infrastructure). He also noted that the support Poland currently provides to Ukraine should result in lucrative contracts for Poland in its neighbor’s post-war development.
Poland’s position on the issue of Ukrainian grain imports is unlikely to change under a new government. This is primarily because Civic Coalition forged an alliance with a left-wing agrarian protest movement called AgroUnion during the elections. AgroUnion played a leading role in protests against the import of Ukrainian agricultural products organized by Polish farmers over the last year, and activists from the movement secured positions on the coalition’s electoral lists. Additionally, the organization’s leader, Michał Kołodziejczak, won his electoral district, which means he will be a member of the Civic Coalition faction in the upcoming parliament.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and representatives of the parties represented in parliament will begin consultations on the formation of a new government on October 25.
Story by Meduza
English-language version by Sam Breazeale
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