Polish Politics and Elections

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Just to note as non-Polish forum members might find it funny:


PM Morawiecki just invited Manfred Weber to the debate before Polish elections, as the narrative is that he is the boss of Tusk and Morawiecki do not want to debate the "intermediaries". Weber rejected the invitation.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Here's a better question. Who even is Polish Coalition/Third Way's constituency? People that would otherwise support Civic Coalition but don't like Tusk?

Well, there are to be honest two separate bases - one, really well rooted as Heat already wrote with dozens of smaller, local political machines based around local government politicians, firefighters (important rural institution), some people who are members of all those farmers organizations. PSL is also still the biggest political party in terms of members, since probably 00s dwarfing all political parties (as for now something ca. 85k members, just for comparison PO has something close to 25k).

Hołownia base is pretty fresh and volatile, mainly based on the popularity of Hołownia, some sort of centrist sentiment both against PiS, and to lesser extend also against the POPiS eternal struggle. Rather centrist, I would say younger part of middle-aged electorate from smaller towns and suburbs (of the Western Poland) is the core of Hołownia electorate. Although he is is pretty strongly connected to the Catholicism and generally associated with that (well, mainly with the fact that he was a host in the Polish version of Got Talent) I noticed that his electorate is usually not really that religious.  

There are also some other, minor components like those few conservative liberals, who pretty much always had been torn between PiS and PO, not able to find place for themselves (part of the so called "AWS orphans") but no one but media (they got some recognizable professional politicians) really cares about them.  

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

So, who is Tadeusz Rydzyk?

There is allegations in Canadian news the Polish government is spying on Canadian citizens (including a former deputy Premier of Alberta) from Polish origin criticizng him.

LOL Jesus what

Tadeusz Rydzyk probably is no longer as influential as he used to be, but basically he is National Catholic media mogul priest (think of a variant of Charles Coughlin) with his own businesses, schools, radio, TV etc. due to whose support PiS is basically unbeatable in that 5-10% of devout elderly Catholic part of society. I think there are Wikipedia articles and a lot of media coverage about Tadeusz Rydzyk and his Radio Maryja. He is basically a symbol for: a) involvement of clergy into politics b) involvement of clergy into worldly matters, like sh**tloads of money.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I am already sick of that electoral campaign.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I know the threshold for seats is 5% for a party and 8% for an alliance.  For the purposes of this rule are the Left, Third Way, and Confederation considered parties or alliances? I assume they are considered alliances.

It depends on the type of electoral committee they decide to participate as. They do not get that status automatically, they have to apply for it. There is whole procedure regulated by law, which specifies rules based on which various types of entities can participate in the elections. Types of those are regulated by the Electoral Code, and there are three of them:

1) komitet wyborczy partii politycznej (KW) - electoral committee (of a party)
2) koalicyjny komitet wyborczy (KKW) - electoral committee of a coalition
3) komitet wyborczy wyborców (KWW) - electoral committee of voters (note: this type of electoral committee is only one allowed to participate in presidential elections)

And now the fun begins, as technically coalitions can participate in the elections as an "ordinary" electoral committee of a party to have lower electoral threshold (The Left is basically doing that second elections in a row due to a trauma of 2015 elections). The main issue in that is that coalitions electoral committee are allowed to split the money from the state which every party after reaching 3% of votes for a party, and 6% for a coalition (so threshold minus 2pp). So, if coalition of the parties decide to run as one of them, and the rest is merely on the electoral lists only the party which is registering the committee will get the money, and this is only their good will if they will somehow, semi-legally share the money with them.  

As for these elections:

1) The Left which is in practice coalition of few parties (post-communist New Left, diem25ist Lewica Razem, and the minors: Unia Pracy, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna [for which I wasted too much of my life by the way] and Socjaldemokracja Polska) participate as party committee of the New Left. Razem basically were subdued by them, so I think in one or two parialemntary terms they will do the same as PvdA/GL, but on a smaller scale (Razem as for now basically has no structures, money etc.).

2) but also PiS decided to participate (again) in the elections as party electoral committee even while they are practically participating as coalition of Zjednoczona Prawica, with their satellites which they are governing Poland - obviously to keep them in check to do not give them too much independence, as their main and the most problematic ally, Suwerenna Polska (formerly Solidarna Polska) led by Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro, was founded in 2011, after unsuccessful attempt to "reform PiS" (probably sideline Kaczyński) by the Ziobro himself.

3) as for the Byzantine-like and overly complicated structure of what Confederation is I would probably have to hire Khan Academy to explain that, because I am not sure if I am even properly understanding this dumbery of a structure. Basically, the closest thing to which I think we can compare Confederation is Dutch PVV. Main difference that there are multiple Geerts, which represents few other political parties, which are members of Confederation (but mainly the two of them - whatever at the moment is name of the Korwin party and nationalists from Ruch Narodowy) but generally do not have members but the leaders and their closest allies. There is so called Rada Liderów Konfederacji (Council of Leaders) who decides about stuff in Confederation. They claim that Konfederacja is "federational" political party, but on paper they are just ordinary political party (Polish law do not consider anything like as federational political party as a real thing) and they participate in the elections as party electoral committee (of a Confederation). But in reality they are more of a coalition than PiS or The Left even if formally not a one in the elections.

4) PO are again, as in the 2019 lenient and decided to participate as a coalition with their satellites so the satellites can get some pocket money to buy themselves something on their own, snacks and soft drinks or whatever.

5) Third Way is coalition, but there is also a twist - although they are technically a coalition of a two parties and they are splitting money 50:50, there are also other parties which have their representatives on their electoral lists.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I do wonder what caused Kon's decline in the polls. They were at 15% this summer. Do the Polish posters know more about this?

Mentzen had a massive PR blitz over the summer which attracted a lot of interest, but as is often the case with these things, they overdid it (and polls are often wonky over the summer anyway, because who on earth is talking to pollsters while on holiday). He also turned out to be shockingly unprepared in actual interviews and debates - the lowest point was when Ryszard Petru, of all people, gatecrashed one of his rallies, heckled him with basic questions about his manifesto, and left him stumbling. Konfa have now instead fallen back on their Old Reliable of Bosak, who despite having Patrick Bateman vibes at least does actual prep before going on TV.

Adding to that there were also voices of some data analysts and journalists that they overinvested into TikTok media content which apparently is now not really that friendly for Mentzen content. Other to that - due to the polls and voting intention more detailed reserach Konfederacja electorate was from all the party electorates the most inclined to change their party choice, probably due to the popularity in the youngest age groups. Thirdly, with their electoral lists registration, obviously some nutjobs and other colourful candidates from the lists "came to the surface" and got some attention in social media, which also could deter some people, especially those who claimed to support Konfederacja due to the "economic program", from supporting - or at least admitting that they support Konfederacja.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Ca. 13:30 local time.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

The count is hopelessly slow. Just hoping the results will confirm the victory of the democratic forces anticipated by the big exit poll. It'd be a little ray of hope in this hour of darkness.

By Polish standards it is not really that slow, I remember worse elections.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

so why did Lewica do so bad compared to 2019? Voters coalescing behind KO to try and kick PiS out better?

Exit polls provided data that generally yes - more than 1/4 of previous electorate voted for PO. But we must also remember that in 2019 leader of PO was Grzegorz Schetyna. PO is now a little bit more liberal in terms of topics like abortion etc. - and we must remember that Left electorate is left wing only in terms of such issues, not really economically - so for them switching to the PO is not really that difficult. Other thing is turnout - more voters, but those new voters were not really charmed by the Left.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

To Konf, which is a very very bad thing, although my understanding is it shouldn't affect the center-to-left coalition math because German Minority wasn't picking sides. Right?

Galla has usually voted with opposition, but is not their official partner.
I think next time German Minority will run on PSL (or Third Way if they still exist) list like their Silesian friends.

This would be tempting probably, especially taking into consideration demographics but I think that they will keep their electoral machine to try their best in the local elections - they still have Sejmik councillors and other local politicians - and I don't think that in local elections turnout will be that high, so they have chances to get some councillors by themselves.

German Minority has lost their seat!

Could Riszard Galla even speak German? I'd been hunting some video interviews of him in German, but failed to find anything beyond members of his cabinet speaking German. But his Polish is a bit wonky (I'm told) so perhaps he speaks a Silesian dialect?

Nah, his Polish is common Polish, as he was born in Wrocław. And Polish as far as I know is his first language, but he knows German on the level which allows him to communicate well enough.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Guessing that because Opole region in Upper East Silesia had so many mixed ethnicity Germans with some Polish ancestry, they were able to avoid, at least in some cases expulsion after WW2. In so many other areas east of Oder Neisse line the areas were so purely German that few could claim a Polish ancestry?

And mixed marriages as there were some Poles in the Opole region even before the IIWW and this was the borderland regions.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Is there a map of Poland's regions or sub-regions, showing the combined results of PO+Third Way+Levicsa and PiSS+Confederacy+One Poland?

Something like this?

https://twitter.com/wbdata/status/1714673418011050183

Any reason for the big spike in support for the opposition in the very southeastern corner of the country?

Bieszczady Mountains and Cisna commune - tourists and people who decided just to move there recently or less recently.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

New Left will start negotiations of joint list with KO for local election.
Not surprising, most of sejmik's constituencies have only 5-6 seats so efficient threshold is about 15%.

https://twitter.com/RobertBiedron/status/1748248986576621656?s=20

In the kinda unexpected, but kinda reasonable twist of events KO decided to run in the Sejmiks elections without the New Left. Now New Left have to quickly decide what and how they are going to do, so they are kinda screwed. PO is sure that they will get everything they can without them, and sharing with them safe spots on the electoral lists is not required.