Polish Politics and Elections

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=264482.0

Your topic is better so we might write there lel

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I and heat probably forgot to mention but that info would be probably interesting for all liberal/anti-PiS posters: Nowoczesna and PO decided that they will create common list in the local elections for voivodship assemblies. Although threshold is equal 5% because of electoral system usually real threshold is much higher, especially for districts with small amount of mandates. Nowoczesna might even got 7% in the scale of the country but got very little mandates for the voivodship assemblies. There will be a lot of wasted votes so cooperation is recommended. There are also ongoing talks between Kukiz and Korwin but I doubt that there will be any long-run success.

Voivodship elections are probably the most dominated by political parties while lower levels of local government tend to base on local committees more. Last elections got also a lot of invalid votes so result this year might be interesting.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Can we just kick that spambot already?

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Lolnews: Polish Greens decided to start in the elections on voivodship level alone.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

The incumbent mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz will seek re-election in the upcoming election. He will probably be supported by the main opposition parties, so that's probably an easy win for the parliamentary minority. Another strong candidate which probably won't be beaten by the ruling party is Rafał Trzaskowski from Warsaw, who has already begun his campaign. He focuses - as for now - mainly on the issue of women's rights, equal opportunities etc. It would be kind of hard for him to lose: he is supported by three parties: the Civic Platform, .Modern and the Democratic Left Alliance. The polls show that we can expect a second round between Trzaskowski and the candidate of Law and Justice, which would be easily won by Trzaskowski.

Holy sh**t, now we have 4 Poles on the Atlas. As for the Trzaskowski campaign focuses he still has no official programme and no official opponent from PiS so we should probably wait for the real campaign to start.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Any reason why PiS have such a lead in the national polls.  One would expect that by now anti-incumbency would have weight down on them.  Although I noticed that between 2007 and 2011 PO had large leads over PiS the entire time.  Is it part of the Polish political culture to give outsizes support to the ruling party in between elections ?

In my opinion (so consider this as only my opinion, not objective truth) this is mainly caused by lack of alternative and political conjuncture. In the times of PO cabinets, especially first one PiS was generally considered as party which can't win, some loosers who shouldn't be treated seriously. On the other hand PO was considered as serious party of serious people who knows what to do during the crisis. PiS still got their core electorate of course, so they had some support but not that big as today). But as now in Poland mainly centre electorate is deciding who is going to win and then that part of society before 2014 were supporting PO. Now situation is different, PO is considered as weak, corrupted and without any real idea what they want to do. So not many voters (even those who are their natural electorate) are treating them seriously. On the other hand PiS got a lot of middle class voters, some part of economically less privileged people so they easily could win elections. So I guess this is not pattern that Poles tend to support party between elections (although to some extend this is truth as for example ruling party have access to the public media, they can actually do something etc.) just combination of few processes. We must also remember that turnout is usually low in Poland so PiS might got support from people who never voted PO or PiS before and PO voters might do not vote during next elections.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I am a little bit skeptical and I do not want to judge too fast but there is visible surge of support for SLD in few recent polls. That is bad news for almost everyone.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Are Razem in contention for any seats anywhere?

As for now this is still not yet decided everywhere. As for the sejmiks level they have ambitions to create their own electoral committees in all voivodships so they have no chances to get an seats. As for the lower level like counties or cities which are de iure counties they will participate in coalitions with some NGOs or other parties. In Wrocław they already decided that they will have coalition with Greens, as far as I remember also they will have some coalition in Warsaw. But probably they will start only in the biggest cities and they do not have chances to win anything anywhere to be honest.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Does Palikot stil participate in politics?

Fortunately no.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

PO and .N have announced the creation of the 'Together for Szczecin' coalition to run in the elections in, er, Szczecin. The high-profile PO MP (and ex-Korwinista, lol) Sławomir Nitras will be their candidate for mayor and some guy from .N I've never heard of before will be candidate for deputy mayor.

I like how Corbyn and Korwin have the same etymology.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

PO and .N have announced the creation of the 'Together for Szczecin' coalition to run in the elections in, er, Szczecin. The high-profile PO MP (and ex-Korwinista, lol) Sławomir Nitras will be their candidate for mayor and some guy from .N I've never heard of before will be candidate for deputy mayor.

I like how Corbyn and Korwin have the same etymology.

Both are old men with very good facial hair whose once-fringe politics have surprising appeal to the youth, after all.

Major difference is that one have party with 40% of popular support and another have party with max. 4% of popular support.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Diem25 officially got its foothold in Poland, although cooperation between Razem and Varufakis have relatively long history. Today Razem declared that they will participate in EP elections via Diem lists. To be honest for me such declaration is pretty obvious signal that local elections are for them only warm up before EP elections. And this is not that stupid from their perspective but unusual comparing to other parties for which local elections are much more important.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Oh yeah, and abortion sh**tstorm will come back soon, so brace yourself.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

So, one major political party announced their candidate for the president of Wrocław, fourth largest Polish city. Member of European Parliament, staunch pro-life movements supporter, anti-LGBT and declared conservative. You might wonder if I am talking about PiS candidate?

Nope, I am talking about Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski, currently supported by PO and now being announced as PO candidate in Wrocław. After many months of pre-campaining for different candidate they decided to support candidate who just recently left PiS. And don't get me wrong, out of the Polish right he is actually decent and lets say civilized, well-mannered politician, (although he have problem with sticking to the one party but hey, he is a politician) but still this is very poor choice for rather liberal city in times with great conflict with PiS.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

There appears to be an anti-PiS coalition in Siedlce (Masovian Voivodeship) between PO, SLD, and the artists formerly known as KORWiN.

No, I don't know either.

And this is only beginning of exotic coalitions.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I don't know if there are any posters which had some hopes with Nowoczesna but today two MPs of that party decided to left the parliamentary club and party. Two rather well-known as for the party members, one is Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus which was influential inside the party, representing more liberals in terms of social issues wing more concerned with abortion, LGBT issues etc. Other one is Joanna Schmidt which is mainly known for being on that famous trip with Ryszard Petru on Madera which caused like 100% loss of his credibility as a leader and politician (although he is not the most clever person I've ever seen so most of the people were not treating him seriously even before that event)

There are gossips that they are planning to start new political initiative with Robert Biedroń, former MP and currently mayor of Słupsk which is now-favourite candidate for candidate for president and Barbara Nowacka, former Twój Ruch politician and main actor of United Left in 2015 tragedy. Formation would be rather social-liberal, sort of Twój Ruch but without Janusz Palikot, but with Ryszard Petru - former leader of Nowoczesna (but his part in that scheme is only part of even less serious gossips).

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Polls for local elections are rarely done in Poland compared to parliamentary one but there is one done by IBRiS. Poll conducted in late April, but today published. Currently PiS haje majority in only one voivodship.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I call BS on that poll. PiS unchanged from 2014 in Podkarpacie? Kukiz /below/ average in Opolskie and not even on the board in Slaskie? SLD going up everywhere but completely imploding in Podlaskie and Podkarpackie where they were already down to their core in 2014? PSL down from 46% to 16% in Swietokrzyskie, where Adam Jarubas rules with an iron fist, while holding up at 23% at Podlaskie? Razem apparently doing better in ing Malopolska than in Mazowieckie? No, this doesn't make sense.

We always should take polls in Poland with a grain of salt. IBRiS is usually ok and as voivodship level is rarely polled I guess taking into consideration poll statistical error it might give some strange results. Kukiz support dynamics might be strange. With 3% statistical error it would be close to it former result from 2014 for SLD in Podlaskie i Podkarpackie. As for the Razem in Mazowieckie maybe they got more than that 1,4% in Małopolskie but just less than 2,4 gained by Kukiz, and as they decided to put 6 parties they just didn't get in. But I agree that 16% for PSL in Świętokrzyskie is ing weird. And if somebody doubt about position of Adam Jarubas position in Świętokrzyskie just look on that map presenting his result from presidential elections in 2015 (http://www.wyborynamapie.pl/prezydenckie2015/gminy%20jarubas.png).

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

RAZEM will sweep the local election because some Facebook meme.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Hey, do you remember that novelization of act on IPN which you might know as that "terrible act on Holocaust denialism"?

During one day (!) Sejm voted on new novelization of that act which generally do not have those controversial paragraphs about legal consequences of attributing crimes of III Reich to Polish State etc. etc. which was included on previous novelization earlier this year. This morning government project of the act was sent to the Parliament and got included into Parliament's today agenda. So basically in one day they just rolled back all changes, at least on Sejm level. Now Senate and President needs to approve it but this is just formality. I've shouldn't be shocked by the tempo of voting because for PiS this is normal but still this is kind of disgusting.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Why did they do it? And what do you think is disgusting about it?

Why they done it? Because they chickened out in confrontation with US and Israel. They got nothing and now they tried to revert the reputation losses. Obviously it was stupid move because the losses in reputation are already huge and its hard to revert them and additionally they now will be perceived by some of their hard-line supporter as weak. But maybe they had some deals with US.

What is disgusting? Not what they done but how they done it. They needed just 9 hours and few minutes to pass it through Sejm, Senate and President. In terms of time it was record. They wanted to block any parliamentary discussion just to pass it faster. This is not normal.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Battle for Warsaw is getting more and more fierce. Both PO and PiS candidates are increasing their poll support as the campaign should start officially soon and they are becoming more and more visible. Today PO got hurt a little bit by one city councilor from that party who decided to leave PO and join PiS. But even despite that PO campaign in Warsaw is not getting well, Trzaskowski is clearly showing that PO didn't learn anything since 2015. On the other hand polls shows that "alles is gut" so I guess elections this year will be mainly about plebiscite on PiS and Trzaskowski still is able to attract centre and undecided voters.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

https://oko.press/uwaga-pis-moze-wygrac-wybory-do-10-sejmikow-po-z-n-tylko-do-4-koalicja-obywatelska-to-za-malo/


SLD in April when they were planning coalition with PSL for local elections had paid for independent research and they got HUGE poll with sample size bigger than 10000. And now Włodzimierz Czarzasty, leader of the SLD decided to share the results with media. Article is in Polish but numbers are pretty self explanatory. Poll results are for voivodship sejmiks elections.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Official date of the elections: 21st October. Second turns probably week after.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Finally, Razem have announced that one of their flagship policies for the local elections will be free school meals for all children, and that their Opole branch will be running for the city council in coalition with the German Minority, which seems a bit strange given that the Germans down there tend to be more CDU than SPD, but then there’s also been a lot of cooperation between them in opposition to the mayor’s policies.

Joint protests probably bring people together. But from publicity reasons very bad move.