How to watch the Polish election like a pro

WARSAW — Poles vote Sunday to elect a new government in a race that could convulse the EU.

Vying for dominance are the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and the opposition Civic Coalition, along with three smaller groups that could prove kingmakers.

With PiS leading in the polls, critics say a third term for the euroskeptic conservatives will further strangle the independent judiciary, women’s and minority rights, and put the accelerator on Warsaw’s collision course with Brussels.

The election has been overshadowed by concerns about media freedom and electoral fairness.

As if that weren’t enough, the PiS government has thrown another curveball at the opposition by holding a controversial referendum on migration, national security and the retirement age on election day. Critics have called the plebiscite a politically motivated ploy to sway the electorate into casting their votes for PiS.

Here’s what you need to know to watch the October 15 election like a pro:

How does it work?

Some 29 million voters are eligible to vote on Sunday, with over half a million registered abroad. Poles will elect representatives to two parliamentary chambers — the lower house, the Sejm, and the upper house, the Senat. 

In the Sejm, 460 seats are being contested by 6,656 candidates from 41 electoral districts — each district gets between seven and 20 seats. Under Poland’s system of proportional representation, seats are allocated according to vote share. Electoral alliances must clear a threshold of 8 percent of the vote to gain representation, while the hurdle for individual parties is 5 percent.

Senators, on the other hand, are elected in 100 single-mandate districts, in which each political group has the right to field only one candidate. Larger cities may have their electoral districts cover more than one senatorial district.

Polling stations open at 7 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. and are located in public schools, fire stations and cultural centers. At 9 p.m., media will publish their first exit polls and projections. The final, official count won’t be known until Monday — or at the latest on Tuesday.

There will be a pre-election blackout starting at midnight on Friday, during which election canvassing, rallies and speeches are banned — the same applies to disseminating election materials on the doorstep and online.

Who’s running? 

With 10 parties and alliances on the ballot, none is expected to win an outright majority. That means the next government will be a coalition between two or more groups.

Here are the major ones:

Law and Justice: In power since 2015 and led by Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS is a right-wing marriage between Kaczyński’s own party, Zbigniew Ziobro’s nationalist Sovereign Poland, and the populist Kukiz’15.

Aided by state-controlled media and making liberal use of the state budget to amplify its message, PiS has framed its campaign around curbing migration, strengthening national security and economic protectionism, increasing social welfare, and protecting the rural way of life.

Civic Coalition: Led by former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk, the largest opposition group is an eclectic alliance anchored by Tusk’s center-right Civic Platform. Its other members include the center-left Modern, the progressive Polish Initiative, the Greens, and the peasant protest movement AgroUnia. 

Key messages include ending Poland’s conflict with the EU, liberalizing Poland’s strict abortion laws, and raising teachers’ salaries.

Third Way: This unlikely coalition brings together one of the youngest parties on the ballot, Szymon Hołownia’s centrist Poland 2050, and the country’s oldest peasant movement, the Polish People’s Party, led by Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. 

Promising to break the 20-year duopoly between Kaczyński and Tusk, the group aims to simplify taxes, clean up the energy supply, and raise wages for women.

Confederation: A far-right alliance of smaller nationalist and extreme-right parties, the Confederation rose to third place in the polls over the summer but its popularity has since slid and is now hovering in the single digits.

In 2019, the Confederation ran on a five-point program: “We don’t want Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes and the European Union.” This time, it’s trying to broaden its appeal, promising to cut red tape and taxes, liberalize access to guns, and limit welfare payments. The latter may prove to be the biggest obstacle to forming a coalition with PiS.

New Left: Made up of six center-left and left-wing political parties, the coalition is running neck and neck with the Third Way and the Confederation for the third, lowest spot on the podium behind PiS and the Civic Coalition.

Its leaders, Włodzimierz Czarzasty and Robert Biedroń, promise to fix the labor market and expand access to family planning. This includes providing fully paid sick leave, a 35-hour work week, as well as reimbursements for prenatal tests and IVF procedures. The group also advocates for taxing the Catholic Church and taking religion out of schools.

Electoral arithmetic

Billed as the most important election since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, Sunday’s vote could see the highest turnout in years. About 70 percent — or 20 million — of eligible voters are expected to turn out.

Undecided voters — and there are 4.4 million of them — could prove crucial: Among voters who say they will definitely go to the polls but don’t yet know who they will vote for, most favor the democratic opposition. The group of undecided voters is also very large in the countryside, which means that PiS’s traditional rural constituency may be crumbling.

If undecided voters turn out in force, that would increase the chances that the Civic Coalition could form a democratic coalition with the Left and the Third Way.

By contrast, if undecided voters stay home, it would be more likely that only four parties are elected. Under this scenario, PiS would win a bigger share of seats and could stay in power with a single coalition partner. However, even the leaders of the most likely partner, the far-right Confederation, have explicitly said in the past that they would not work with PiS.

Complicating the picture is the fact that Third Way, as a political alliance, must win at least 8 percent of the national vote to gain seats. The other four groups have avoided this problem by running on single-party tickets, subject to the 5 percent threshold.

Whatever the election result, bargaining on forming a coalition government is likely to be messy.

Record turnout is expected abroad, with the opposition poised to win especially among Polish citizens living in Western Europe. Polling stations in the Netherlands have already announced that they have reached capacity and are advising voters to seek alternative locations in Belgium and Germany.