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Poles are voting on Sunday in their most important election since the fall of the Berlin Wall, with serious consequences for the future of Polish democracy, European unity and the West’s efforts to counter Russian aggression.
The highly charged campaign included some of the largest rallies on Warsaw’s streets since democracy was restored three decades ago. Opposition leader Donald Tusk is seeking a “breakthrough” in his long and personal battle against the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski. In their eight years of rule, the arch-conservatives have boosted Poland’s economy while controlling the courts and the media by advocating strict abortion restrictions, targeting LGBTQ+ rights and undermining European Union ties.
What you should know about the election in Poland, Europe’s most watched election in 2023
The campaign was characterized by nationalism, with both sides taking an anti-migrant stance. Tusk has also tried to portray the vote as a referendum on democracy.
“The stakes are high,” Tusk – Poland’s prime minister from 2007 to 2014 and a former president of the European Council – told supporters on Friday.
Kaczynski, currently Poland’s deputy prime minister, although he was long considered the country’s most powerful politician, complains about Tusk. Last week he encouraged his compatriots to vote for continuity for “peaceful development and a secure future.”
Poland faces a crucial choice. Observers say it was not a fair vote.
Almost 30 million Poles are currently eligible to vote probably the highest voter turnout in years. At midday, the National Election Commission said voter turnout was 22.59 percent, higher than at the same time in 2019. Polls close at 9 p.m. Warsaw time, when generally reliable election polls are scheduled to be released. Particularly if the vote is comprehensive, it could take days or longer to form a government and could lead to another vote next year.
Some analysts question whether “law and justice” would get along peacefully in the event of defeat or seek to challenge the results. It has already limited the independence of the National Electoral Commission and the Supreme Court, which would likely be involved in deciding a contested vote.
Poles will also be presented with four referendum questions, which many analysts have criticized as an attempt to stoke support for the ruling party. One asks whether “you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.” The opposition has encouraged voters to boycott the referendum, but to do so they must actively reject the referendum vote and the Communicate your private voting preferences to poll workers.
The outcome is being watched particularly in Washington, Brussels, Kiev and Moscow, as Poland plays a central role in the West’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has equipped Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks and Polish MiG-29 fighters. Since the start of the war, millions of Ukrainian refugees have also been admitted.
But domestic politics have clouded that support. Last month, a dispute over the impact of Ukrainian grain exports on Polish farmers escalated to the point where Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced an end to Polish arms supplies.
The grain dispute threatened to extinguish the goodwill between Poland and Ukraine
Law and Justice is leading in most polls but could fall short of the government majority, creating a window for the opposition. That has raised the prospect of a political agreement between Law and Justice and the even harder right-wing Confederation Party, whose rock concert-like rallies attracted Poles dissatisfied with traditional parties and whose politicians promoted anti-Ukrainian rhetoric.
Led by a social media star who once reportedly joked that his supporters were against “Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes and the European Union,” the Confederacy enjoyed an initial surge that cooled before the vote, notably as law and the judiciary took a less supportive stance towards Ukraine. But the party still appears poised to overcome the hurdle needed for its MPs to enter parliament.
Any law-and-justice agreement with the Confederacy would be more bad news for Ukraine, especially after Robert Fico, a pro-Russian far-left politician with many positions aligned with the far-right, appeared this month in the has returned to power in neighboring Slovakia.
Pro-Russian populist party wins elections in Slovakia
The Confederation has maintained that it would not enter into a coalition with any of Poland’s traditional parities, although analysts still see room for some form of political agreement with the party or its individual lawmakers.
“That would be bad for Polish-Ukrainian relations and for Poland’s support for Ukraine,” said Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Warsaw-based Institute for Public Affairs.
In Poland’s complicated parliamentary system, political parties and alliances must overcome a threshold of 5 and 8 percent, respectively, to win seats in parliament. If they don’t exceed that threshold, those seats are distributed to other parties, with the winner with the most votes making the biggest gains.
Given the polarized electorate, three smaller political forces – the Confederacy, the Left Party and a center-right alliance called the Third Way – appear to be key to the outcome. The Left and Third Way both appear to be more natural allies of Tusk, although Kaczynski may try to single out individual lawmakers, particularly from the agrarian Polish People’s Party, which is part of the Third Way alliance.