A complete ballot count confirms that three coalition parties that vowed to restore democratic standards in Poland together won over 54% of the votes in the nation’s weekend election
Three opposition parties that vowed to restore democratic standards in Poland together won over 54% of the votes in the nation’s weekend parliamentary election, putting them in a position to take power, according to a complete ballot count reported Tuesday.
The conservative Law and Justice party, which has governed the country for eight turbulent years, won slightly over 35% of the votes, making it the single party with the most votes. But the party and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński lost their majority in parliament and appeared to have no way to hold onto power.
The official ballot announced by the National Electoral Commission aligns closely with an exit poll released after voting ended Sunday.
Good news, but this isn’t over yet.
Remember David Frum’s Nostradamus-like prediction that we’re seeing played out in the USA and Canada: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
Well by that logic we either let them win or let them try and take it, at least by not letting them win there is a clear and moral resolution to the problem. Let them cry, and in jail for sedition if they feel angry enough about it.
At least some good election news after the Slovakia returned to Fico goverment.
It also looks like no other party wants any form of coalition with PiS. 3 other parties might form some coalition at least initially to remove the damage PiS caused in last 8 years and improve situation with public media, courts…
Oh, and we’ve got record voter turnout, it’s higher than 1989.
The turnout is really impressive. It seems that the overall amount of people voting PiS was the same as it was 4 years ago, but the new people voting made the change.
That doesnt bode well for the future, though. Voter turnout is notoriously volatile, so it may well sink next cycle. Then again, maybe a few PiS voters will have bitten the dust by then.
By the time PiS might not have their propaganda tools like TVP anymore.
I never knew how far down the path of absolute nationalism like China that Poland had went. Shocking, hope this is a start of some healthy change
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Finally! I´m happy for the polish people. This won´t solve all problems but it´s at least a step in a better direction - away from misogynistic, christian fundamentalist, right wing populism.
Good for you, guys! Wish you all the best, now you can finally heal. Greetings from Hungary
more importantly, they got almost 54% of seats and will be able to get vote of confidence, unlike PiS (that technically speaking won the election as they got 42% seats, but no one is willing to ally with them)
I’m not that familiar with polish politics, is this an actually centrist party or just a “centrist” party that’s actually far right?
PIS (Law and Justice) is national-conservative far-right party that in reality is also pro-social market, Konfederacja / Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość (Confederation or in full Confederation Liberty and Independence) is somewhat similar to Law and Justice but they are more pro-free market, and from what we’ve seen so far they were against Law and Justice in most of the votes and they mostly voted together with Civic Platform.
We also have centrist parties like Trzecia Droga (Third Way) or Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition) that is coalition of parties previously known as Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform), Nowoczesna (Modern), iPL (Polish Initiative) and Zieloni (Greens).
Finally we also have left-wing Lewica (The Left) which is coalition of multitude of smaller parties that were centre-left/far-left.
The results of the 2023 parliament votes are:
- Law and Justice 35.38% (194 mandates)
- Civic Coalition 30.70% (157 mandates)
- Third Way 14.40% (65 mandates)
- The Left 8.61% (26 mandates)
- Confederation 7.16% (18 mandates)
So we have 248 mandates for centrist/left-wing parties that probably will work together against 194 mandates for Law and Justice alone or 212 mandates if they are voting with Confederation (that probably won’t be the case in votes around economic/social votings).
The sad thing is that the president is literally with Law and Justice and until we vote him out in 2025, the opposition (even with Confederation) won’t have majority to vote down his veto. Also I hope there won’t be any issues from the president around forming the new government with opposition instead of Law and Justice (even if they had majority).
Hope this helps a little move around here.
