Poland’s ruling party set for clear victory

Poland’s conservative governing Law and Justice party won the most votes in Sunday’s election in the deeply divided nation and appeared, according to an exit poll, to have secured a comfortable majority in Parliament to govern for four more years.

The exit poll, conducted by the research firm Ipsos, projected that Law and Justice won 43.6 per cent of the votes. That would translate into 239 seats, a majority in the 460-seat lower house of Parliament.

The poll said a centrist proEuropean Union umbrella group, Civic Coalition, would come in second with 27.4 per cent. The biggest party in the coalition is Civic Platform, which governed Poland in 2007-2015.

Coalition leaders cheered and welcomed the result as a spur toward uniting society around common goals.

Other parties projected to surpass the 5 per cent threshold to get into Parliament were a left-wing alliance with 11.9 per cent, the conservative agrarian Polish People’s Party with 9.6 per cent and new far-right alliance Confederation with 6.4 per cent.

The exit poll had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. Final vote results, which are expected tonight, could shift, as they have in past elections.

A prominent journalist, Konrad Piasecki, said that “at the moment it looks like the largest triumph in the history of parliamentary elections” in Poland. But he also cautioned that results varying even slightly from the exit poll could mean big changes to the distribution of seats in Parliament.

Law and Justice has governed Poland since 2015 and is popular for its social conservatism and generous social spending. It ran a campaign that highlighted its social programmes and vowed to defend traditional Roman Catholic values.