Poland’s ruling coalition is on track for a narrow win in local elections, short of a landslide that Prime Minister Donald Tusk had hoped would scupper the chances for a right-wing opposition comeback.
“Parties in Tusk’s coalition were set to win 52.5 per cent of votes in Sunday’s regional and municipal elections, according to an Ipsos exit poll. But the Law and Justice party (PiS) of Jarosław Kaczyński, Tusk’s longtime nemesis, was expected to secure 33.7 per cent of the vote. The final results due Monday are expected to show PiS remains Poland’s largest party.
Since Tusk took office in December, Kaczyński has led a bitter fight to thwart the premier’s pro-EU agenda, relying on the president and the country’s courts, which PiS packed with loyalists in its eight years in power.
Still, Tusk equated his coalition’s result with the general elections of October 2023, hailing ‘a spectacular defeat’ for PiS in Poland’s largest cities, including Warsaw.
But he also acknowledged that the opposition had managed to mobilise its conservative electorate in rural areas. Sunday’s vote, Tusk said, showed that his coalition still faced more work to win over PiS voters. ‘This road will not be easy,’ he said.
Kaczyński also declared victory on Sunday and dismissed criticism of his leadership of the party. ‘As Mark Twain once said, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,’ Kaczyński said.
He said PiS needed to focus on securing more victories in elections for the European parliament in June and the presidential vote next year before aiming to win the next general election.
PiS also seemed to have benefited from a more lacklustre turnout compared with October, when a record 74 per cent of the electorate voted. Only 51.5 per cent of voters cast their ballots on Sunday, according to preliminary data, also lower than the 54.9 per cent who participated in the last local elections in 2018.
Voters elected members of Poland’s 16 regional assemblies, as well as thousands of mayors and local councillors. A run-off will be held on April 21 for mayoral candidates who failed to secure more than 50 per cent of the vote.”
In Warsaw, mayor Rafał Trzaskowski from Tusk’s Civic Platform was set to secure re-election with almost 60 per cent, according to the Ipsos poll. Tusk welcomed the result, which could help Trzaskowski launch another bid for the Polish presidency next year, after narrowly losing to PiS nominee Andrzej Duda in 2020.
“This path to make democracy really strong in Poland, to make sure PiS populists will never come back to power, will not be easy at all,” Trzaskowski said.
Sunday’s elections were a first test for Tusk’s coalition and significant because regional and local politicians will be in charge of disbursing part of the €137bn of EU funds that Brussels has started to unlock after he came to power. The funding was frozen during a lengthy dispute between the European Commission and the PiS government over the rule of law.
“This election gained importance because the winners will also get access to a lot of EU money that will be distributed through local governments,” said Izabela Szostak-Smith, a local politician from Tusk’s camp in a Warsaw district.
