Polish Politics and Elections

[President Johnson]

I believe that this will be the final seat distribution, give or take a seat.

PiS - 194 (-41)
KO - 157 (+23)
Third Way - 65 (+35)
Left - 26 (-23)
Konfederacja - 18 (+7)
German Minority 0 (-1)

KO + TD + Left = 248

Compared to the initial exit poll
PiS -6
KO -6
TD +10
Left -4
KWN +6
The errors balance out so the number of seats the opposition coalition wins remains spot on.

You were spot on with your seat distribution calculations.

Since no one has posted it yet, percentage of votes vs. percentages of seats:

PiS -              35.38% of votes - 42.17% of seats
KO -              30.70% of votes - 34.14% of seats
Third Way -    14.40% of votes - 14.13% of seats
Left -              8.61% of votes - 5.65% of seats
Konfederacja - 7.16% of votes - 3.91% of seats

That pretty much seals the deal, I guess. Unless the parties can't agree on a coalition, Tusk will be prime minister in a couple of weeks.

I don't actually expect Duda to pull any tricks here. Not only could that backfire in snap election, he has been somewhat less radical than the PiS government. Remember he even rejected the worst parts of the "Lex Tusk" law. Still, Tusk's new government will be busy to revoke all these laws once in office.

[CityofSinners]

Tusk won't overturn many PiS laws. He doesn't have the 3/5 majority to override a presidental Veto. Tusk will spend most of his time purging the PiS patronage network and trying to unfreeze the EU recovery billion.

[Oryxslayer]

Tusk won't overturn many PiS laws. He doesn't have the 3/5 majority to override a presidental Veto. Tusk will spend most of his time purging the PiS patronage network and trying to unfreeze the EU recovery billion.

Until 2025, there will be divided government yes. But that just begs the question, who does the coalition run as their candidate (a formal coalition should nominate just a solitary individual) to to try and replicate this win for them?

[President Johnson]

Tusk won't overturn many PiS laws. He doesn't have the 3/5 majority to override a presidental Veto. Tusk will spend most of his time purging the PiS patronage network and trying to unfreeze the EU recovery billion.

I'm not sure since the president of Poland is more of a ceremonial head of state similar to the president of Germany. It's not a semi-presidential republic like France, let alone a presidential system as the US has.

[Germany1994]

Tusk won't overturn many PiS laws. He doesn't have the 3/5 majority to override a presidental Veto. Tusk will spend most of his time purging the PiS patronage network and trying to unfreeze the EU recovery billion.

I'm not sure since the president of Poland is more of a ceremonial head of state similar to the president of Germany. It's not a semi-presidential republic like France, let alone a presidential system as the US has.

Nope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Poland

[CityofSinners]

The polish President has a lot of formal Power. Veto, he can propose legislation, can refer laws to the constitution court before signing them, appoint military leadership and can grand pardon.

[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.

[lfromnj]

So why does Opole have so many ethnic Germans anyway ?

[rob in cal]

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?

[H. Ross Peron]

The difference in the diaspora vote between other European countries (inc. GB o/c) and Canada especially is hilarious.

I've only just now tuned in to this election (yes, yes, I know). Can you elaborate?

UK: KO 49.0, PiS 14.3, TD 12.4, NL 12.1, K 9.4
Canada: PiS 47.1, KO 32.4, K 6.3, NL 5.7, TD 5.0

Interactions between Polish and Ukrainian Canadians must get...awkward at times.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

As always, full proportional results: TL;DR, ZP drops a ton, KO drops a little, Lewica and Kon make decent gains, and new parties like BS and JPP make decent entrances, while MN retains their seat. The 3-coalition coalition of KO, TD, and Lewica only lose 1 or 2 seats while ZP loses over 30.

Poland 2023

Alliances as a whole first:

ZP: 163 seats (-31)
KO: 141 seats (-16)
TD: 66 seats (+1)
Lewica: 40 seats (+14)
Kon: 33 seats (+15)
BS: 9 seats (+9)
PJJ: 7 seats (+7)
MN: 1 seat (+1)

BS [8.54233 quotas] gets the last seat over RDiP [0.5293 quotas] by 612 votes. Thanks to almost every party rounding up with quotas that end in high 0.5s to 0.7, poor RDiP is blocked from a seat despite having over half a quota. In my ideal system that probably would add on an overhang seat, but those don't exist in Poland.


New Parties:
Nonpartisan Local Government Activists (BS): A group of local government officials, basically just pushing for local and regional issues, and is a heavily decentralized party.
There is One Poland (PJJ): Far-right anti-vax conspiracy theorists (they say that COVID was a manufactured "medical experiment") who call themselves the "true right" saying PiS and Kon don't go far enough. Led by Siemianowice Śląskie mayor Rafał Piech.
German Minority Electoral Committee (MN): Basically just German minority interests. Only ran in Opole.



And now, going by party. For my own sanity so I don't have to figure out each independent candidate's possibility of winning, I have grouped the independents aligned with each coalition into their own "party", which of course is different than what I have done previously. I simply do not wish to try and see which of several dozen or hundred independents won and which group they were aligned with, I'm just using the wikipedia numbers here.

ZR: 163 seats (-31)
     PiS: 134 seats (-23)
     SP: 10 seats (-8)
     Rep: 2 seats (-2)
     K'15: 2 seats (+/- 0)
     ZR Aligned Independents: 15 seats (+2)

KO: 140 seats (-17)
     PO: 106 seats (-16)
     .N: 8 seats (+2)
     iPL: 5 seats (+2)
     Z: 1 seat (-2)
     AU: 1 seat (+/- 0)
     KO Aligned Independents: 19 seats (-3)

TD: 66 seats (+1)
     PL2050: 33 seats (+/- 0)
     PSL: 25 seats (-3)
     CdPL: 2 seats (-1)
     TD Aligned Independents: 6 seats (+5)

Lewica: 40 seats (+14)
     Nowa Lewica: 26 seats (+7)
     Razem: 10 seats (+3)
     Lewica Aligned Independents: 4 seats (+4)

Kon: 33 seats (+15)
     NN: 13 seats (+6)
     RN: 10 seats (+5)
     KKP: 4 seats (+1)
     Kon Aligned Independents: 6 seats (+3)

BS: 9 seats (+9)
PJJ: 7 seats (+7)
MN: 1 seat (+1)
RDiP: 1 seat (+1)

CdPL [1.4935 quotas] gets the last seat over fellow TD member UED [0.4485 quotas] by 2112 votes. RDiP gets in at the expense of 1 KO seat.

New Party:
RDiP: Hard to find much info, but from their 1 page PDF campaign announcement(?) they seem economically nationalist and populist.

[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.

[palandio]

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.

"Some Poles" is an understatement. Ancestry-wise the population east of a line that runs a few kilometers west of Opole was majority Polish, with the exception of certain cities. But extensive Germanization politics during the Kaiserreich and mixed marriages led to a population that covered the whole spectrum from 100% Polish identity to 100% German identity. An important feature in Upper Silesia was the absence of a confessional barrier, since the local Germans were usually Catholics, differently from the areas further north. After WWII many fled or were expelled to Germany, but those that were considered Polish enough were allowed to stay if they wanted. Many also left during the decades since then, because German nationality law permits the immigration and immediate naturalization of ex-citizens and their descendants. The remaining Upper Silesians either have fully integrated into Polish society or retain a certain German heritage, even if ethnically it's usually only a part of their family history.

The other cases are:
- The (before WWII) almost purely German areas where people usually had no recent Polish ancestry at all.
- The border regions further north where (with exceptions) the confessional barrier prevented the forming of a "hybrid" population.
- Mazuria, where originally the bulk of the population spoke a Polish dialect ("Mazurian", counted separately by the Prussian authorities), but since they were usually Protestants the Polish element of their identity usually vanished completely during Germanization. After most had already fled during the 1944/45 Soviet assault, the rest was in principle allowed to stay in Poland and be re-Polonized, but not so many did, and almost all that stayed left to Germany during the next years. Hence no relevant German minority in Mazuria today. (I have some Mazurian ancestry, but they left already long before WWII for economic reasons.)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The little group in Upper Silesia are one of those fascinating borderland minorities that crop up here and there around very old boundaries (often now, as in this case, former ones) all across Europe. They used to sometimes be referred to in German by the term Wasserpolak, which was basically an ethnic slur and means exactly what it looks like it does. Anyway, back in the 90s the German Minority list used to overperform the number of people with German heritage (and not just for reasons of turnout), and now it seems that things have flipped the other way.

[DL]

I've also read that almost the entire population of present day Wroclaw are descended from Poles from pre-WW2 Lwow which then became Lvov as part of the Soviet Union and is now Lviv in Ukraine. They replaced all the Germans who lived in Wroclaw before WW2 when it was called Breslau

[Oryxslayer]

I've also read that almost the entire population of present day Wroclaw are descended from Poles from pre-WW2 Lwow which then became Lvov as part of the Soviet Union and is now Lviv in Ukraine. They replaced all the Germans who lived in Wroclaw before WW2 when it was called Breslau

I mean it shouldn't be a shock to anyone in a Polish elections discussion that the wars and subsequent ethnic expulsions/transfers/cleansing broadly created two groups with different experiences, cultural development, material conditions, and identities. That's the broad reason why the old borders of the Kaiser's German Empire show up not just in the electoral map, but on so many other demographic measurements.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You can actually see them, to some extent, on satellite maps taken at night and also showing woodland cover and so on as the population density in rural areas added to Poland after 1945 is a lot lower than in the rest of the country: attempts to repopulate the new territories were only properly successful in the cities and conurbations, and largely for the same reasons as those areas continually leaked people from the early 19th century onwards when they were still German; i.e. remote, poor quality soil and so on.

[H. Ross Peron]

You can actually see them, to some extent, on satellite maps taken at night and also showing woodland cover and so on as the population density in rural areas added to Poland after 1945 is a lot lower than in the rest of the country: attempts to repopulate the new territories were only properly successful in the cities and conurbations, and largely for the same reasons as those areas continually leaked people from the early 19th century onwards when they were still German; i.e. remote, poor quality soil and so on.

This makes me wonder if areas with particularly high % of those descended pre-1945 Poles (presumably mostly rural) vote divergently from other parts of western Poland.

[Estrella]

You can actually see them, to some extent, on satellite maps taken at night and also showing woodland cover and so on as the population density in rural areas added to Poland after 1945 is a lot lower than in the rest of the country: attempts to repopulate the new territories were only properly successful in the cities and conurbations, and largely for the same reasons as those areas continually leaked people from the early 19th century onwards when they were still German; i.e. remote, poor quality soil and so on.

This makes me wonder if areas with particularly high % of those descended pre-1945 Poles (presumably mostly rural) vote divergently from other parts of western Poland.

I'm not sure if Lower Silesia is such an area, but PiS won there even though it's as far west as it gets.

[Oliver]

I've found a table on en.wikipedia.org (2023_Polish_parliamentary_election) which shows the results of the parties and independents within a list:

For example:

   New Left   1,199,503   5.55   19   −17
   Left Together   453,730   2.10   7   +1
   Independents and others   205,785   0.95   0   −5

The Left      Total   1,859,018   8.61   26   −23

How is this table calculated?

Can voters of "The Left" indicate if they support New Left or Left Together?

[MaxQue]

I've found a table on en.wikipedia.org (2023_Polish_parliamentary_election) which shows the results of the parties and independents within a list:

For example:

   New Left   1,199,503   5.55   19   −17
   Left Together   453,730   2.10   7   +1
   Independents and others   205,785   0.95   0   −5

The Left      Total   1,859,018   8.61   26   −23

How is this table calculated?

Can voters of "The Left" indicate if they support New Left or Left Together?

You are voting for a candidate on a list, not a list per se.

[Oliver]

Do the voters see which party the candidate they vote belongs to?

[M0096]

Do the voters see which party the candidate they vote belongs to?

Ballot cards didn't show party of candidate, but official lists of candidates contained professions, localities of residence and parties of candidates.

[M0096]

Incumbent Sejm members who lost reelection:

PiS:
(1) Ewa Szymańska
(1) Stanisław Żuk (Kukiz'15)
(3) Przemysław Czarnecki
(4) Ewa Kozanecka
(5) Zbigniew Girzyński
(6) Krzysztof Głuchowski
(6) Leszek Kowalczyk
(6) Krzysztof Szulowski
(7) Monika Pawłowska
(7) Beata Strzałka
/8/ Jacek Kurzępa
/8/ Elżbieta Płonka
(9) Włodzimierz Tomaszewski (Partia Republikańska/Republican Party)
(10) Grzegorz Wojciechowski
(11) Tomasz Rzymkowski
(12) Krzysztof Kozik
(12) Marek Polak
(14) Anna Paluch
(14) Elżbieta Zielińska
(15) Piotr Sak (Suwerenna Polska/Sovereign Poland)
(16) Waldemar Olejniczak
(16) Rafał Romanowski
(17) Dariusz Bąk
(18) Iwona Kurowska
(19) Jarosław Krajewski
(19) Paweł Lisiecki
(20) Dariusz Olszewski (Suwerenna Polska/Sovereign Poland)
(20) Zdzisław Sipiera
(21) Violetta Porowska
(22) Adam Śnieżek
(23) Jerzy Paul
(23) Andrzej Szlachta
(24) Mieczysław Baszko (Partia Republikańska/Republican Party)
(25) Tadeusz Cymański
(27) Kazimierz Matuszny
(28) Mariusz Trepka
(29) Barbara Dziuk
(29) Jarosław Gonciarz
(30) Teresa Glenc
(31) Andrzej Sośnierz
(32) Danuta Nowicka
(33) Marek Kwitek
(34) Adam Ołdakowski
(35) Wojciech Kossakowski
(35) Jerzy Małecki
(36) Tomasz Ławniczak
(38) Zbigniew Ajchler
(39) Jadwiga Emilewicz
(41) Leszek Dobrzyński
(41) Michał Jach

KO:
(3) Krzysztof Mieszkowski (Nowoczesna/Modern)
(4) Magdalena Łośko (PO)
(5) Paweł Szramka (Dobry Ruch/Good Movement)
(7) Stanisław Żmijan (PO)
(9) Hanna Gill-Piątek
(9) Krzysztof Piątkowski (PO)
(9) Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska (PO)
(19) Paweł Poncyliusz
(20) Andrzej Rozenek
(21) Ryszard Wilczyński (PO)
(24) Eugeniusz Czykwin
(24) Robert Tyszkiewicz (PO)
(25) Jerzy Borowczak (PO)
(25) Małgorzata Chmiel (PO)
(26) Tadeusz Aziewicz (PO)
(29) Tomasz Olichwer (PO)
(35) Michał Wypij
(40) Piotr Zientarski (PO)

Third Way:
(3) Jacek Protasiewicz (UED)
(4) Dariusz Kurzawa (PSL)
(15) Stanisław Bukowiec
(19) Joanna Fabisiak
(26) Artur Dziambor (Wolnościowcy/Freedomers)

New Left:
(1) Robert Obaz
(2) Marek Dyduch
(4) Jan Szopiński
(10) Anita Sowińska
(13) Maciej Gdula
(20) Arkadiusz Iwaniak
(23) Wiesław Buż
(24) Paweł Krutul
(26) Marek Rutka
(27) Przemysław Koperski
(28) Zdzisław Wolski
(32) Rafał Adamczyk
(34) Monika Falej
(39) Katarzyna Kretkowska
(40) Małgorzata Prokop-Paczkowska

Konfederacja:
/8/ Krystian Kamiński
(18) Anna Siarkowska (Ruch Narodowy/National Movement)
(18) Dobromir Sośnierz (Wolnościowcy/Freedomers)
(20) Janusz Korwin-Mikke (Nowa Nadzieja/New Hope)
(25) Michał Urbaniak

German Minority:
(21) Ryszard Galla

[ctherainbow]

https://twitter.com/broderly/status/1713950624377655313?s=20

Can he adopt me, tho?   

I’m getting serious Ryan Bizzarro vibes from this guy, tbh.