Polish Politics and Elections

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

If you look at the broad strokes (I'm not insane enough to do proposography of the individual municipalities), the Holownia map looks like a map of areas that had lots of resettlement from now-Western Belarus and areas with high concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities. Peak 'that would be an ecumenical matter', so actually a fairly logical coalition for someone like him to end up with.

E.g. clear signs of strong support from Silesian Germans and so on.

Yes, very logical for a candidate who radiates ecumenical, non-offensive Catholicism. The resettlement thing gets funnier the more I think about it - it's been 75 years and, on one level or another, these people still seem to recognise a semi-homeboy when they see one.

Yeah, other minorities that seems to support Hołownia are Lithuanians in Puńsk (one county near border with Lithuania) and Lutherans in Wisła (near Czech border).
But you must also remember that Hołownia is from Białystok and he had really nice campaign there, also touching issues relevant for Orthodox voters.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

If we want to be honest Trela wasn't much better tho.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

If you look at the broad strokes (I'm not insane enough to do proposography of the individual municipalities), the Holownia map looks like a map of areas that had lots of resettlement from now-Western Belarus and areas with high concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities. Peak 'that would be an ecumenical matter', so actually a fairly logical coalition for someone like him to end up with.

E.g. clear signs of strong support from Silesian Germans and so on.

Yes, very logical for a candidate who radiates ecumenical, non-offensive Catholicism. The resettlement thing gets funnier the more I think about it - it's been 75 years and, on one level or another, these people still seem to recognise a semi-homeboy when they see one.

Yeah, other minorities that seems to support Hołownia are Lithuanians in Puńsk (one county near border with Lithuania) and Lutherans in Wisła (near Czech border).
But you must also remember that Hołownia is from Białystok and he had really nice campaign there, also touching issues relevant for Orthodox voters.

Yes, that wasn't really a surprise. He almost won Hajnówka!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

If we want to be honest Trela wasn't much better tho.

I'm not sure he did anything. Lazy prick.

I realised the other day that the left of your voivodeship has given us Miller, Olejniczak, Joński, the RACJA PL cranks, and now those two. You're not sending your best!

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

If we want to be honest Trela wasn't much better tho.

I'm not sure he did anything. Lazy prick.

I realised the other day that the left of your voivodeship has given us Miller, Olejniczak, Joński, the RACJA PL cranks, and now those two. You're not sending your best!

Wait until I will be important politician (not going to happen, fortunately) - you will miss sensibility of Miller and ideological prowess of Joński.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

By the way, this year's #bazarek (supposed leaked exit polls disguised as market prices) really sucked.

As soon as I noticed that 'lewitujacy umysl' prick getting big numbers for obvious disinformation I decided to just completely ignore anyone who wasn't Palade. I think in so far as anyone other than him on Twitter actually has access to legitimate exit polls before they're made public, they're all on locked accounts these days.

Did Palade release something? All I saw were tweets like "Palade is asleep", but then I stopped checking twitter altogether and took a nap.

Mostly numbers pulled out of somebody's ass or "educated guesses" like "Teleexpress anchor doesn't look too happy".

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

By the way, this year's #bazarek (supposed leaked exit polls disguised as market prices) really sucked.

As soon as I noticed that 'lewitujacy umysl' prick getting big numbers for obvious disinformation I decided to just completely ignore anyone who wasn't Palade. I think in so far as anyone other than him on Twitter actually has access to legitimate exit polls before they're made public, they're all on locked accounts these days.

Did Palade released something? All I saw were tweets like "Palade is asleep", but then I stopped checking twitter altogether and took a nap.

Mostly numbers pulled out of somebody's ass or "educated guesses" like "Teleexpress anchor doesn't look too happy".

He released one poll around 6pm, another around 7pm, and then leaked a rounded-up version of the final exit poll ten minutes before the end of electoral silence just to show off.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Has anyone seen Kosiniak-Kamysz since Sunday? He looked like a broken man on election night.

[rob in cal]

Outside of Holownia have any other candidates endorsed yet? Is it normal for endorsements after the 1st round by the losing candidates?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

The Left clearly struggles with "working on the ground". Even Razem, for all the hype, seems to be content to just have a few MPs, elected on SLD/Wiosna backs, and enjoy the "high life" of being "muh parliamentary party".

I mean, what else to expect? For years the left side was monopolized by SLD, which had a powerful machine, was able to win elections, but it was mostly designated to keep the post-PZPR crowd relevant (kind of similar to PSL, long dominated by ex-ZSL types, but with much more smaller support post-1997 collapse).

Other left wing parties simply lacked a room, as evident with left-wingers coming from the opposition background that were either pushed aside (leaving politics altogether like Modzelewski or sticking on the fringes), sucked it and tried to make the best of the situation (like Jacek Kuroń, remaining with UD, then UW), or ended up in SLD client parties (UP, PPS before that). Some, like Celiński, just joined SLD. Yes, that's an interesting historical paradox, that the Solidarity (and KOR before that) started with strong left-wing economic goals and had a sizable wing identifying with the leftist philosophy, but so-called "post-solidarity" parties were decisively dominated by the right.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It's always funny to see candidates who managed to collect 100,000 signatures required to be on the ballot ending up with a negligible number of votes.

But how do they manage to collect so many signatures? Paying money for them? Getting help from a bigger party (in Serbia it's often alleged that the dominant party SNS collects signatures for smaller allied and/or spoiler parties)?

I don't really know. Never looked into this.

It happens every election (save for 1990). In 1995 three candidates received less than 100k. Four in 2000. Five in 2005. Two in 2010 and three in 2015.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Outside of Holownia have any other candidates endorsed yet? Is it normal for endorsements after the 1st round by the losing candidates?

Hołownia is now enjoying being wooed by the top two. He may very well end up not endorsing, but he'd been sending some signals he could give Duda an "anti-endorsement". Same for WKK. I hear Bosak may not endorse, period.

Biedroń is clearly going to endorse Trzaskowski.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

The Left clearly struggles with "working on the ground". Even Razem, for all the hype, seems to be content to just have a few MPs, elected on SLD/Wiosna backs, and enjoy the "high life" of being "muh parliamentary party".

I mean, what else to expect? For years the left side was monopolized by SLD, which had a powerful machine, was able to win elections, but it was mostly designated to keep the post-PZPR crowd relevant (kind of similar to PSL, long dominated by ex-ZSL types, but with much more smaller support post-1997 collapse).

Other left wing parties simply lacked a room, as evident with left-wingers coming from the opposition background that were either pushed aside (leaving politics altogether like Modzelewski or sticking on the fringes), sucked it and tried to make the best of the situation (like Jacek Kuroń, remaining with UD, then UW), or ended up in SLD client parties (UP, PPS before that). Some, like Celiński, just joined SLD. Yes, that's an interesting historical paradox, that the Solidarity (and KOR before that) started with strong left-wing economic goals and had a sizable wing identifying with the leftist philosophy, but so-called "post-solidarity" parties were decisively dominated by the right.

The entire history of UP is a wasted opportunity. Formed too late, got 7% and did nothing with it, failed to back Kuroń in 1995, when it could still have counted, pathetically dropped out in 1997, shed half its members and cuddled up to SLD in 2000/1, and then somehow managed to lose their state funding in 2003, which I literally just realised today was probably what made the Unia Lewicy idea Jaruga-Nowacka was pushing in 2005 non-viable and basically killed any hope of a left independent of SLD for a decade until Razem came along.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

It's always funny to see candidates who managed to collect 100,000 signatures required to be on the ballot ending up with a negligible number of votes.

But how do they manage to collect so many signatures? Paying money for them? Getting help from a bigger party (in Serbia it's often alleged that the dominant party SNS collects signatures for smaller allied and/or spoiler parties)?

- Jakubiak was definitely helped by PiS. They had Ukrainian immigrants copy out signatures they'd collected for something else like The Red-Headed League, lmao.
- Witkowski is the CEO of a housing co-op and IIRC intimidated tenants into signing his lists. I suspect he may also have had help from elements of the pro-Miller faction in SLD.
- Żółtek's are probably the most likely to be mostly legit, there aren't many people left in KNP but they're probably disproportionately ex-UPR fanatics with decades of experience fighting unwinnable fights
- Piotrowski is a mystery to me. I can imagine he could have had help from all sorts of long-lasting nationalist networks and fundamentalists in the Catholic Church but I have no idea if there's enough people in those to get him 100,000.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

It's always funny to see candidates who managed to collect 100,000 signatures required to be on the ballot ending up with a negligible number of votes.

But how do they manage to collect so many signatures? Paying money for them? Getting help from a bigger party (in Serbia it's often alleged that the dominant party SNS collects signatures for smaller allied and/or spoiler parties)?

I don't really know. Never looked into this.

It happens every election (save for 1990). In 1995 three candidates received less than 100k. Four in 2000. Five in 2005. Two in 2010 and three in 2015.

AFAIK from people I know who used to work for political parties they have it from various sources:

sometimes bigger parties help, sometimes they use old signatures from different elections, starting to collect before the period you legally can do that is very common, I rarely hear about buying signatures - smaller parties do not have cash for that, bigger parties have enough goons to collect legally (although they also copy old signatures sometimes).

Fresh example: Unia Pracy candidate Waldemar Witkowski at the beginning got rejected by Electoral Commission because some of his 100k signatures were actually signatures of people who were dead at the time when Commission had announced the elections. Probably because they used old signatures.

[jaichind]

Exit poll by age



Interesting how the youth a much more radicalized in both direction which much stronger showings for both Hołownia and Bosak.

I wonder how many of the youth vote for Hołownia and Bosak will turn out in the second round.

[jaichind]

https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/507211-rosnie-przewaga-andrzeja-dudy-nad-rafalem-trzaskowskim

Social Changes has it at Duda winning 53-47 with turnout at 64% in the second round.  Previous poll a week ago had it at Duda winning 51-49

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Exit poll by age



Interesting how the youth a much more radicalized in both direction which much stronger showings for both Hołownia and Bosak.

I wonder how many of the youth vote for Hołownia and Bosak will turn out in the second round.

One thing: Hołownia is anything but radical. I would say that his popularity in the youngest age groups is effect of "freshness" similarly to Kukiz few years ago.

[Astatine]

https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/507211-rosnie-przewaga-andrzeja-dudy-nad-rafalem-trzaskowskim

Social Changes has it at Duda winning 53-47 with turnout at 64% in the second round.  Previous poll a week ago had it at Duda winning 51-49

Wpolityce is a very PiS leaning site.

Would be very cautious with pollsters CBOS and Social Changes, CBOS saw Duda at 52 % two days before the election. Social Changes is less biased, but should be taken with a grain of salt unless other polls see it the same way.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/507211-rosnie-przewaga-andrzeja-dudy-nad-rafalem-trzaskowskim

Social Changes has it at Duda winning 53-47 with turnout at 64% in the second round.  Previous poll a week ago had it at Duda winning 51-49

Social Changes is not a real pollster. It's run by some non-profit grifter from the PiS orbit and its address is literally just his house.

[jaichind]

Exit poll by age



Interesting how the youth a much more radicalized in both direction which much stronger showings for both Hołownia and Bosak.

I wonder how many of the youth vote for Hołownia and Bosak will turn out in the second round.

One thing: Hołownia is anything but radical. I would say that his popularity in the youngest age groups is effect of "freshness" similarly to Kukiz few years ago.

I always figured the youth vote for Hołownia is the SJW vote.  Most likely I am wrong here.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Exit poll by age



Interesting how the youth a much more radicalized in both direction which much stronger showings for both Hołownia and Bosak.

I wonder how many of the youth vote for Hołownia and Bosak will turn out in the second round.

One thing: Hołownia is anything but radical. I would say that his popularity in the youngest age groups is effect of "freshness" similarly to Kukiz few years ago.

I always figured the youth vote for Hołownia is the SJW vote.  Most likely I am wrong here.

No, Hołownia is rather moderate candidate, I would say even more moderate than Trzaskowski, at least in terms of narrative.

[bigic]

The "SJW candidate" was Biedroń, not Holownia.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Imagine thinking 'SJW candidate' is a useful concept for understanding the politics of Eastern European countries. Good grief.

Biedron was mostly the candidate of sad Razem-genepool left-wing diehards like me, to an almost comical degree. (His best result anywhere seems to have been in Wroclaw because of people basically voting for Dziemianowicz-Bąk by proxy, lol)