The official exit poll for the Polish elections puts the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) as the largest party, but with the vote share for the main opposition Civic Forum (KO) along with the Left (Lewica) and Third Way (Trzecia Droga) ahead both in vote share and the likely seat numbers to be able to form a majority.
According to the IPOS poll, PiS had taken 36.8% which would give it 200 seats, while the combined vote of the three main opposition parties was 53.2% which would return 248 seats, comfortably more than the 231 required to form a government, or more likely perhaps to elect KO leader Donald Tusk as Prime Minister in a minority government.
The only hope for PiS, which will most likely be able to guarantee the support of the Confederation – on 6.2% in the exit poll with a likely 12 seats – is if for some reason the component parts of Third Way do not agree to support Tusk.
That, however, is a long shot and although President Duda will allow current Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki several weeks in which to negotiate and engineer a means for PiS to remain in government the more likely outcome is that Tusk will be able to cobble together a majority from what is a strange dogs dinner of three forces all of them individually being comprised of different factions and none of them close to one another ideologically. The only thing they have in common is a hatred of PiS.
Civic Platform itself contains the tiny Green left but is mostly made up of Civic Forum which commands the vast bulk of KO seats and whose closest Irish equivalent is probably Fine Gael in its current mode. Lewica, the Left, is mostly made up of New Left MPs and although led by a former member of the ruling Communist PZPR, Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, is, similar to most of the Irish left, a liberal pro EU “progressive” party that majors on abortion and support for immigration.
Third Way (Trzecia Drogo) is projected to have 55 seats so it is the main factor in what happens next. Its support for Tusk is likely but not guaranteed, as the main component of its supportPOLAN is made up of rural conservative Catholics some of whom left Civic Platform because they felt it was too liberal. It is highly unlikely that it would participate in any government that included the despised mish mash that includes former members and reinvented minor parties that were once part of Polish Stalinism.
Third Way is also highly unlikely to go along with any moves towards liberalising abortion, introducing same sex marriage or opening up Poland to mass immigration, all of which will be key demands from the Left and which the Left has already criticised Civic Forum for not committing itself to during the election and might even prevent them voting for Tusk.
The result of the four referendums might prove to be an even bigger defeat for PiS as the indications were that less than the 50% of voters required to legitimate any result had even completed the ballot. The four propositions were:
While the third and fourth proposals excited the predictable hysteria from the liberal, centre and far left both in Poland and in the rest of the EU, the first two make a mockery of the claim that Law and Justice are anything like a traditional party of the right, let alone “fash adjacent” and all the other gibberish spouted by the reds.
They are in fact completely of a part with a traditional nationalist policy informed by Catholic social teaching. The fact that the bankrupt communists were on the opposite side with some calling for a boycott illustrates the sorry pass to which that malignant strain has come. Whether Poland is captured by that element remains to be seen.