Conservative ruling party declares win in split nation
WARSAW — Poland’s conservative ruling party Law and Justice won the most votes in a general election held Sunday in the deeply divided nation and appeared, according to an exit poll, to have secured a comfortable majority in the parliament to govern for four more years.
The exit poll, conducted by the research firm Ipsos, projected that Law and Justice won 43.6% of the votes. That would translate into a majority of seats — 239 —in the 460seat lower house of parliament.
The poll said that a centrist proEuropean Union umbrella group, Civic Coalition, would come in second with 27.4%. The biggest party in the coalition is Civic Platform, which governed Poland from 20072015.
Coalition leaders cheered and welcomed the result as a spur for an effort toward uniting society around common goals and understanding.
Other parties expected to surpass a 5% threshold to get into parliament were a leftwing alliance, which was projected to have 11.9%; the conservative agrarian Polish People’s Party with 9.6%; and a new farright alliance called Confederation with 6.4%.
The exit poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points and the final results, which are expected by Tuesday, could shift, as they have in past elections.
A prominent journalist, Konrad Piasecki, said “at the moment it looks like the largest triumph in the history of parliamentary elections” in Poland. But he also cautioned that even if the results are slightly different from the exit polls that could result in a significant change to the distribution of seats in parliament.
Pawel Zerka, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said the high level of support for Law and Justice “should not be interpreted as a sign that Poles have become nationalist or xenophobic. Rather, it reveals an effective party machine and an ability of PiS to mobilise voters with policies based on direct social transfers.”
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 programs and vowed to defend traditional Roman Catholic values against an onslaught of gay rights and other liberal ideas from the West.
It has been accused of weakening the rule of law in the young democracy with an overhaul of the judicial system that has given the party more power over the courts, and has drawn criticism as well for using state media as a propaganda outlet and hostile rhetoric toward the LGBT community.
Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is considered the real power behind Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s government, cautioned that the exit polls weren’t the final results but nonetheless declared victory.
“Despite a powerful front, we managed to win,” he told party supports as he held high a bouquet of roses.
Civic Platform leader Grzegorz Schetyna said the fight wasn’t fair, an apparent reference to the way Law and Justice harnessed state media to pump out positive coverage of itself while casting a poor light on political rivals.
“This was not an even struggle; there were no rules in this struggle,” Schetyna said. “We do not have a feeling that we were taking part in an honest struggle, that our opponent is using honest methods.”
The leftwing party leaders celebrated their expected return to parliament after failing to reach a threshold to get any seats in 2015.
Critics fear that four more years for Law and Justice will reverse the democratic achievements of this Central European nation, citing the changes to the judiciary and the way the party has marginalized minorities, for instance with its recent campaign depicting the LGBT rights movement as a threat.
Law and Justice’s apparent success stems from tapping into the values of the largely conservative society while also evening out extreme economic inequalities.