As of this morning at 7 a.m., polling stations for the parliamentary elections will be open in Poland. 29 million voters are asked to choose between Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s sovereign party “Law and Justice” (PiS) and Donald Tusk’s pro-European alliance “Citizens’ Coalition” (KO). However, one party and two smaller alliances will be decisive. The goal is to elect 460 members of the Sejm, the lower chamber of parliament, and 100 senators for the next four years. Polls close at 9 p.m., when exit polls are expected to be of uncertain reliability.
The conservative and populist party led by Kaczynski is expected to hold on to first place, according to polls that give him 33-36% of voting intentions, although a sharp decline compared to 43.6% in 2019. Former European Council President Tusk’s centrist and pro-European electoral alliance “Ko” would be in second place with a “margin” of 26-28%. What is crucial, however, is how many seats the “Confederation” will win, a right-wing, racist, homophobic party that wants to cut military aid to Ukraine and also denies that it wants to ally with the Pis. Even Kaczynski says he doesn’t want her. Tusk, on the other hand, wants to reach an agreement with the parties of two smaller alliances: the newly founded center-right party with partly agricultural connotations “Third Way” and the social democratic, EU-friendly and progressive party “The Left”. Those gathered by parties and alliances Votes that land below the respective thresholds of 5 and 8% go to the winner, probably the Pis, so it is difficult to clearly predict whether eight years of Pis conflict will continue or end Be with the PiS since 2015. “EU, among other things, for the politicization of the judiciary and the subjugation of the public media.”