Here’s a guide to the 2023 Polish elections: the date, the electoral law, the candidates, and what the polls say.
Polish elections 2023: everything is ready for the vote which will be held on Sunday, October 25h. Poles will be called upon to renew the 460 members of the Sejm - the real decision-making branch of Parliament - and the 100 of the Senate.
The vote in Poland will arrive eight months before the European elections which will be held between 6 and 9 June 2024 throughout the whole European Union. According to the polls, the vote would not be as obvious as in the past.
The outgoing prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, leader of the conservative party Law and Justice (PiS), is aiming for his third consecutive mandate. This would be a record for Poland.
Challenging him will be Donald Tusk, former prime minister of Poland and former president of the European Council, who will lead the center-right liberal coalition called Civic Coalition (KO).
Relations between Warsaw and Brussels are at the center of this electoral campaign: at stake are the 36 billion euros in funds for the Polish Recovery Fund which the EU has currently frozen for violation of the rule of law.
Another crucial matter of these elections is the war in Ukraine: Warsaw has so far been Kyiv’s most solid ally in the EU, but relationships have cracked following the grain price crisis.
In general, the 2023 Polish elections will be a sort of referendum to continue the conflict with the European Commission (Morawiecki), or to mend the rift with Brussels (Tusk), thus adopting a more pro-European line.
Poland elections 2023: the electoral law
At the Poland 2023 parliamentary elections Polish citizens will be asked to elect - four years after the last time - the 460 members of the Sejm and the 100 of the Senate. The electoral law will differ depending on the branch of Parliament.
To elect the deputies of the Sejm, the most important Chamber in Poland, a purely proportional voting system is used with a threshold of 5% for lists and 8% for coalitions.
For the Senate , however, Poland is divided into one hundred single-member constituencies with the same number of senators who are elected through a majoritarian electoral law: whoever gets just one more vote than the other candidates becomes a senator.
The European Parliament issued a statement analyzing the government’s March 2023 electoral law in June. "The revision of the Polish electoral rules, completed in March 2023, includes changes to polling stations and free transport for the elderly and disabled on voting day. Despite the government’s argument that this would strengthen democracy and facilitate the participation of disadvantaged citizens, the opposition argues that the changes are designed to encourage the participation of voters who traditionally support the ruling party and that changing the position of polling places will make it harder for some voters to find one. The opposition is also concerned about the short time frame available for their implementation, with elections scheduled for autumn 2023”.
Poland elections 2023: the candidates
In the 2023 Polish elections the challenge will be entirely on the outgoing prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the former prime minister Donald Tusk. However, the other main political forces could play a decisive role if an electoral tie ultimately occurs.
At the moment Morawiecki leads his second government supported not only by his PiS party, but also by the allies of Accord, Solidarity Poland, and the Republican Party. The same coalition will be on the field in the 2023 elections.
Tusk will instead lead the Civic Coalition which sees his Civic Platform party as the majority shareholder; the Greens and liberal parties such as Nowoczesna or social democrats such as the Polish Initiative.
Also within the center-right is the coalition led by Polish People’s Party (PLS), which also includes the pro-European environmentalists of Polonia 2050.
The hopes of the center-left, however, are all in the hands of Lewica, while the right of Confederation (Konf) would be clearly growing and could become decisive if PiS does not obtain a majority in the Sejm.
Poland elections 2023: the polls
This is the latest political survey relating to the parliamentary elections in Poland was carried out by United Surveys on 10 October.
As can be seen from the poll, PiS would still be in the lead but with a sharp decline compared to the 43.6% obtained in the 2019 elections; on the contrary, the Civic Coalition would be growing and would now only be just over six percentage points away.
However, it is very interesting to see what the projections of seats would be for the same poll.
If this were the case, Mateusz Morawiecki would not be able to reach the majority of 231 seats even together with the right of the Confederation. At the same time, Donald Tusk could succeed in the event of a post-vote agreement with the Polish People’s Party and the center-left of Lewica.
A post-vote agreement between Morawiecki and Tusk, however, would be completely out of the question: although the two coalitions are both center-right, the diametrically opposed visions of Europe are too important to allow any type of dialogue.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2023-10-11 16:12:00. Original title: Elezioni Polonia 2023, quando si vota? Data, candidati e sondaggi
