Poland’s liberal coalition reinforces its success in local elections – Technologist

Six months after the surprise victory in the parliamentary elections on October 15, 2023, the democratic parties of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (Liberals), Third Way (a peasant party allied with the Christian Democrats) and United Left, faced their first test. The ousting of the populist Law and Justice party (PiS), in power since 2015, raised great hopes in Poland and Europe alike. It represented the first clear victory for a democratic camp over an authoritarian populist party, achieved under conditions that were highly challenging for the opposition.

Nearly 100 days after the formation of Tusk’s government, local elections took place where Poles were asked to elect the mayors of the country’s 2,500 municipalities, as well as regional (voivodship) and district councilors. The results confirmed the ongoing democratic momentum. Overall, they were generally a repeat of the parliamentary elections. While the PiS came out on top in the regional councils with 33.7% of the vote, the combined score of the three democratic parties – Civic Coalition (31.9%), Third Way (13.5%) and United Left (6.8%) – gave them a comfortable lead.

The Civic Coalition is expected to govern in 10 of the 16 voivodships, with PiS losing two of them. Against a backdrop of low voter turnout (51.5%), the stronger mobilization of the historically more conservative eastern and southern regions explains the PiS’s first place in the national score. The far-right Konfederacja garnered 7.5% of the vote.

Nationalist Party did not collapse

In the big cities, historically strong supporters of the Liberals, the only surprise was the scale of some of the victories. The liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, who is tipped to be the Civic Coalition’s candidate for the spring 2025 presidential election, was re-elected in the first round, with 59.8% of the vote (18.5% for his PiS opponent). The mayor of Gdansk, on the Baltic coast, Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, was re-elected with 62.3% of the vote (against 12.2% for PiS). The PiS will not govern any city of over 100,000 inhabitants, and barely a handful of cities of more than 60,000 inhabitants.

“Today, I can solemnly announce that October has repeated itself in April!” said Tusk enthusiastically, whose return to national politics after a career in European bodies was a decisive factor in the liberals’ fall victory. “The whole of Europe has watched how we defeated populism in spite of unequal competition,” added Warsaw mayor Trzaskowski. “The whole of Europe is now watching as we clean up after them. That’s why this victory is so important.”

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