Polish Elections

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the Autumn Poland goes to the polls to elect a new government; Sejm (Parliament) elections are in September and the Presidential elections are in October (or is that the second round? Either way it's in the autumn).

It looks like no one party (or coalition of natural allies) will control the Sejm (expect lots of horse trading...) and there's been a large movement in the polls recently with the populist Law and Justice party surging and now leading the centrist Civic Platform in the most recent poll. The incumbent post-Communist Democratic Left Alliance is now polling between 11 and 4% and is actually behind the new social democratic splinter group, Social Democracy in Poland in some polls. Lepper's outfit, Samoobrona, is swinging between 20 and 10%, the far right League of Polish Families has been heading down towards 10% after a recent (and scary) surge while the Peasant Party's support seems to be fairly stable at about 6% (although one poll had them on 0%, I think that's an outlayer).

The Presidential election is just as confused and as many as 6 (!) candidates have a realistic chance of getting through to the second round. They are:

Lech Kaczynski (Law and Justice), Donald Tusk (Civic Platform), Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz (Democratic Left Alliance), Zbigniew Religa (Centrum; a centrist outfit I've never heard of before), Andrzej Lepper (Samoobrona) and Marek Borowski (Social Democracy in Poland).

Kaczynski (Mayor of Warsaw and a hardline populist) is the favourite and it would be a major shock if he fails to get through to the second round.