Polish Politics and Elections

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Places where Konfederacja had higher support are pretty weirdly spread over the map.

I think most fall into three categories:

1) constituencies already inclined towards nationalist parties - Podlasie, Malopolska, Podkarpacie, Lublin
2) constituencies containing cities with universities, which can be expected to have a higher percentage of Extremely Online Korwinista incels - Warsaw, Krakow, Lublin, Wroclaw, the Silesian constituencies
3) constituencies where they're better organised than usual - in Piotrkow Trybunalski, the lead candidate was a Korwinista from Belchatow who'd previously run for mayor in 2018 and done quite well, and also campaigned on rejecting the EU climate package, in Gdynia and Bydgoszcz Dziambor and Sypniewski actually understand what a campaign is, and in Konin they got 14% in some random powiat because Ruch Narodowy have apparently swarmed the place. I think this may be the case in Lubuskie as well, but I can't remember any details so don't take my word for it.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Places where Konfederacja had higher support are pretty weirdly spread over the map.

That's because they had such a remarkably even distribution of support. Nowhere where they really stood out negatively or positively: very unusual.

That has always the case when Korwin-Mikke is involved. The stereotype (rooted in fact) is that he performs best with young men with an... unduly high opinion of their strength and intelligence, and that's not a geographically constrained constituency, particularly now that the internet allows for far-right propaganda to be spread so much more widely.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Biedron seems to have just confirmed he will be the left's candidate for President in May. The next six months are going to be absolutely unbearable.

https://twitter.com/RobertBiedron/status/1191452869955915779

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

PO are reportedly considering withdrawing Kidawa-Blonska as their candidate for President and replacing her with Mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski. Incredible stuff.

_{now replace Biedron too}

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Officially called for 28 June.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Officially called for 28 June.

Clownfiesta.

I am but one person, but one thing this has absolutely ensured is that I will take great pleasure in voting for Trzaskowski in the second round.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Officially called for 28 June.

Clownfiesta.

I am but one person, but one thing this has absolutely ensured is that I will take great pleasure in voting for Trzaskowski in the second round.

I honestly wonder whether to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (Biedroń being a huge dud) to give him stronger position. There's just no one in the Polish political scene I held in bigger contempt than The Pen (Duda's been called that because he's signing everything his party tells him to sign).

Back in 2015 I casted a spoiled ballot in the first round (actually wrote in Grodzka on the paper, but we don't allow write-ins to be counted), since there was no candidate I could even remotely identify with. With hindsight I would've voted Komorowski at the start.

Running Biedroń was a huge mistake. I'm just hoping his poor result doesn't drag the rest of the Left down Ogórek/Krzaklewski style. I know Zandberg and ADB didn't want to run, but either of them would have done much better. Hell, Cimoszewicz or Belka would have done much better if they'd dredged them up. There's a strong chance I'll vote for Trzaskowski or WKK, or maybe write 'The Ghost of Karol Modzelewski' on the ballot paper.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Officially called for 28 June.

Clownfiesta.

I am but one person, but one thing this has absolutely ensured is that I will take great pleasure in voting for Trzaskowski in the second round.

I honestly wonder whether to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (Biedroń being a huge dud) to give him stronger position. There's just no one in the Polish political scene I held in bigger contempt than The Pen (Duda's been called that because he's signing everything his party tells him to sign).

Back in 2015 I casted a spoiled ballot in the first round (actually wrote in Grodzka on the paper, but we don't allow write-ins to be counted), since there was no candidate I could even remotely identify with. With hindsight I would've voted Komorowski at the start.

Running Biedroń was a huge mistake. I'm just hoping his poor result doesn't drag the rest of the Left down Ogórek/Krzaklewski style. I know Zandberg and ADB didn't want to run, but either of them would have done much better. Hell, Cimoszewicz or Belka would have done much better if they'd dredged them up. There's a strong chance I'll vote for Trzaskowski or WKK, or maybe write 'The Ghost of Karol Modzelewski' on the ballot paper.

What happened to Biedroń? I thought that he was quite popular.

Oh, where do I begin?

1) Upon launching Wiosna he instantly dropped the saccharine charm that people liked about him and instead started coming off as a defensive prick in his public appearances
2) He claimed to be building a grassroots movement, which, yes, was always going to be bullsh!t, but he then proceeded to create a party which it was literally not possible to join
3) Their campaign in the Euro elections leaned heavily on stupid gimmicks (SINGLE EUROPEAN PASSPORT! lmao who cares) in lieu of actual policies and talking about real issues
4) He spent a lot of time hyping up how he was recruiting star candidates only to come up with lists that included none of them, but did include his and his chief of staff's partners in top positions, grim ex-SLD apparatchik Gawkowski, shady businesspeople, and at least one actual criminal
5) He was extremely cagey about his party's funding
6) He and his inner circle blatantly tried to hush up a bullying scandal within the party
7) He leaned way too heavily on the dregs of Ruch Palikota
8 ) Finally, he broke his pledge to not take his seat in the European Parliament upon finding out his partner wasn't going to make it in and someone he didn't like had gotten the second-most votes after him

I'm sure I've missed something, but basically, that campaign bore no relation whatsoever to the way he'd been pitching himself. Even all that wouldn't have been fatal but for the fact that he clearly didn't want to run, only did because absolutely no one else wanted to, and now, in so far as he is visible at all, is delivering lines obviously written by someone else with minimal conviction.

He's also been cursed with some of the worst campaign chairs the Left could have come up with - first Hanna Gill-Piatek, queen of the Lodz hipsters and early 2010s blogosphere beef aficionado, under whose enlightened leadership the campaign scheduled rallies for noon on a Wednesday, and then that lazy prick Tomasz Trela - but that's not really his fault.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

It's the lowest (percentage wise) point for the main left-wing candidate in history of direct elections.

1990: Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz (SdRP): 9.2%
1995: Aleksander Kwaśniewski (SLD): 35.1 (1st round), 51.7 (2nd round)
2000: Aleksander Kwaśniewski (SLD): 53.9%
2005: Marek Borowski (SDPL): 10.3%
2010: Grzegorz Napieralski (SLD): 13.68%
2015: Magdalena Ogórek (SLD): 2.38%
2020: Robert Biedroń (Left): 2.21%

Given that the left polled double digits in the most recent parliamentary elections, it is clear many of those votes went elsewhere - to the second and third placed candidates presumably?

If you believe the exit poll, 46% went for Trzaskowski and 22% went for Holownia. Which seems plausible.

I posted this elsewhere as well, but I'll repost it here as it may be informative for some:

2001 was now almost twenty years ago and many of the people who voted for SLD-UP/Samoobrona/PSL then are dead and their children and grandchildren do not necessarily share their worldview (which was not necessarily compatible with what would be understood as social democracy in the West). Others have likely emigrated. The failure to understand this is one of the most common analytical mistakes in recent Polish political commentary.

The last three presidential elections have fallen into the same pattern of three relevant candidates: one PiS candidate, one anti-PiS candidate, and one candidate who gathers an unstable coalition by claiming to challenge the duopoly and offer vague change. Since 2015, the far-right has also begun to make some semi-respectable showings. The second role is filled by the PO candidate by default (though this may not have occurred this time if Kidawa-Blonska hadn't been replaced) while the third has been filled by Napieralski, Kukiz, and now Holownia. Biedron was a flawed and, above all, reluctant candidate whose campaign was managed by morons up until late May (by which point there was nothing left to salvage), and the Left miscalculated by not realising that its voters were the most scared of coronavirus and the most concerned about PiS rigging a May postal election. The last month of Biedron's campaign was probably the best (because the mentally subnormal and lazy Łódź MPs who'd unaccountably been put in charge were sidelined in favour of Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk), it was just that the electorate had lost interest since there was no real prospect of toggling into either slot #2 or #3.

In so far as there is any conclusion on the long-term fate of the Polish Left to be drawn from this, it's that the Left need to commission some proper research into who voted for them in 2019 and why, and what groups of voters they could attract and under which circumstances now, because it's clear they don't actually know and spent this election flying blind.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

How much of the Biedron and WKK electorate is winnable for Duda?  Would some left leaning voters who supported them be from the lower less educated classes and might like Duda over Trzaskowski?

According to present polling, >90% of Biedron voters will go for Trzaskowski. There are no reserves for Duda to be found there, the 2019 Left electorate does not appear to be demographically distinct enough from the PO electorate for that. The picture is less clear with WKK but it is currently believed that a supermajority of his voters will also vote for Trzaskowski. The caveat is that Polish polling is crap, but both those conclusions seem intuitive.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Diaspora results have now finalized:

TRZASKOWSKI Rafał: 48,13%
DUDA Andrzej: 20,86%
HOŁOWNIA Szymon: 15,68%
BOSAK Krzysztof: 8,78%

Only about 311 thousand total votes

UK: TRZASKOWSKI Rafał: 48,37%
Germany: TRZASKOWSKI Rafał: 52,54%
Ireland: TRZASKOWSKI Rafał: 48,85%
USA: DUDA Andrzej: 50,67%

I know that Diaspora turnout was adversely impacted by Coronavirus this year, but it still seems like (and it's something just anecdotally I have noticed with many Poles I know in Germany as well) that the Polish Diaspora seems to have much less strong opinions on Polish Politics, than other countries with similar societal polarisation and Issues with democratic backsliding (Turkey comes to mind, practically every Turk in the diaspora has some sort of strong opinion on Erdogan). Is this perception accurate? What are the reasons for it?

Compare the typical turnouts in Turkish elections with Polish elections pre-2018.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

If you look at the broad strokes (I'm not insane enough to do proposography of the individual municipalities), the Holownia map looks like a map of areas that had lots of resettlement from now-Western Belarus and areas with high concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities. Peak 'that would be an ecumenical matter', so actually a fairly logical coalition for someone like him to end up with.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

If you look at the broad strokes (I'm not insane enough to do proposography of the individual municipalities), the Holownia map looks like a map of areas that had lots of resettlement from now-Western Belarus and areas with high concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities. Peak 'that would be an ecumenical matter', so actually a fairly logical coalition for someone like him to end up with.

E.g. clear signs of strong support from Silesian Germans and so on.

Yes, very logical for a candidate who radiates ecumenical, non-offensive Catholicism. The resettlement thing gets funnier the more I think about it - it's been 75 years and, on one level or another, these people still seem to recognise a semi-homeboy when they see one.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

By the way, this year's #bazarek (supposed leaked exit polls disguised as market prices) really sucked.

As soon as I noticed that 'lewitujacy umysl' prick getting big numbers for obvious disinformation I decided to just completely ignore anyone who wasn't Palade. I think in so far as anyone other than him on Twitter actually has access to legitimate exit polls before they're made public, they're all on locked accounts these days.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

If you look at the broad strokes (I'm not insane enough to do proposography of the individual municipalities), the Holownia map looks like a map of areas that had lots of resettlement from now-Western Belarus and areas with high concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities. Peak 'that would be an ecumenical matter', so actually a fairly logical coalition for someone like him to end up with.

E.g. clear signs of strong support from Silesian Germans and so on.

Yes, very logical for a candidate who radiates ecumenical, non-offensive Catholicism. The resettlement thing gets funnier the more I think about it - it's been 75 years and, on one level or another, these people still seem to recognise a semi-homeboy when they see one.

Yeah, other minorities that seems to support Hołownia are Lithuanians in Puńsk (one county near border with Lithuania) and Lutherans in Wisła (near Czech border).
But you must also remember that Hołownia is from Białystok and he had really nice campaign there, also touching issues relevant for Orthodox voters.

Yes, that wasn't really a surprise. He almost won Hajnówka!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

If we want to be honest Trela wasn't much better tho.

I'm not sure he did anything. Lazy prick.

I realised the other day that the left of your voivodeship has given us Miller, Olejniczak, Joński, the RACJA PL cranks, and now those two. You're not sending your best!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

By the way, this year's #bazarek (supposed leaked exit polls disguised as market prices) really sucked.

As soon as I noticed that 'lewitujacy umysl' prick getting big numbers for obvious disinformation I decided to just completely ignore anyone who wasn't Palade. I think in so far as anyone other than him on Twitter actually has access to legitimate exit polls before they're made public, they're all on locked accounts these days.

Did Palade released something? All I saw were tweets like "Palade is asleep", but then I stopped checking twitter altogether and took a nap.

Mostly numbers pulled out of somebody's ass or "educated guesses" like "Teleexpress anchor doesn't look too happy".

He released one poll around 6pm, another around 7pm, and then leaked a rounded-up version of the final exit poll ten minutes before the end of electoral silence just to show off.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Has anyone seen Kosiniak-Kamysz since Sunday? He looked like a broken man on election night.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, from the pathetic showing we’ve seen so far, is Biedroń’s career at national politics over?

It's really seems that at some point Biedroń and the Left simply stopped caring, and a lot of Left's voters, myself including, decided it'd be better to vote Trzaskowski in the first round already (I wouldn't have voted for Kidawa, unless there was a runoff).

Not to mention that Left three times changed person responsible for the campaign and SLD was not really interested in investing their own money and time into Biedroń.

And again, big shout out to Hanna Gill-Piątek, who kept trying to do things like organise rallies in the middle of the work day or hold press conferences out east on Sunday mornings while refusing to communicate with anyone on the ground.

The Left clearly struggles with "working on the ground". Even Razem, for all the hype, seems to be content to just have a few MPs, elected on SLD/Wiosna backs, and enjoy the "high life" of being "muh parliamentary party".

I mean, what else to expect? For years the left side was monopolized by SLD, which had a powerful machine, was able to win elections, but it was mostly designated to keep the post-PZPR crowd relevant (kind of similar to PSL, long dominated by ex-ZSL types, but with much more smaller support post-1997 collapse).

Other left wing parties simply lacked a room, as evident with left-wingers coming from the opposition background that were either pushed aside (leaving politics altogether like Modzelewski or sticking on the fringes), sucked it and tried to make the best of the situation (like Jacek Kuroń, remaining with UD, then UW), or ended up in SLD client parties (UP, PPS before that). Some, like Celiński, just joined SLD. Yes, that's an interesting historical paradox, that the Solidarity (and KOR before that) started with strong left-wing economic goals and had a sizable wing identifying with the leftist philosophy, but so-called "post-solidarity" parties were decisively dominated by the right.

The entire history of UP is a wasted opportunity. Formed too late, got 7% and did nothing with it, failed to back Kuroń in 1995, when it could still have counted, pathetically dropped out in 1997, shed half its members and cuddled up to SLD in 2000/1, and then somehow managed to lose their state funding in 2003, which I literally just realised today was probably what made the Unia Lewicy idea Jaruga-Nowacka was pushing in 2005 non-viable and basically killed any hope of a left independent of SLD for a decade until Razem came along.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

It's always funny to see candidates who managed to collect 100,000 signatures required to be on the ballot ending up with a negligible number of votes.

But how do they manage to collect so many signatures? Paying money for them? Getting help from a bigger party (in Serbia it's often alleged that the dominant party SNS collects signatures for smaller allied and/or spoiler parties)?

- Jakubiak was definitely helped by PiS. They had Ukrainian immigrants copy out signatures they'd collected for something else like The Red-Headed League, lmao.
- Witkowski is the CEO of a housing co-op and IIRC intimidated tenants into signing his lists. I suspect he may also have had help from elements of the pro-Miller faction in SLD.
- Żółtek's are probably the most likely to be mostly legit, there aren't many people left in KNP but they're probably disproportionately ex-UPR fanatics with decades of experience fighting unwinnable fights
- Piotrowski is a mystery to me. I can imagine he could have had help from all sorts of long-lasting nationalist networks and fundamentalists in the Catholic Church but I have no idea if there's enough people in those to get him 100,000.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/507211-rosnie-przewaga-andrzeja-dudy-nad-rafalem-trzaskowskim

Social Changes has it at Duda winning 53-47 with turnout at 64% in the second round.  Previous poll a week ago had it at Duda winning 51-49

Social Changes is not a real pollster. It's run by some non-profit grifter from the PiS orbit and its address is literally just his house.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Imagine thinking 'SJW candidate' is a useful concept for understanding the politics of Eastern European countries. Good grief.

Biedron was mostly the candidate of sad Razem-genepool left-wing diehards like me, to an almost comical degree. (His best result anywhere seems to have been in Wroclaw because of people basically voting for Dziemianowicz-Bąk by proxy, lol)

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Anyway, Holownia has announced that he's starting a 'movement' (lol) called 'Poland 2050'.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Anyway, Holownia has announced that he's starting a 'movement' (lol) called 'Poland 2050'.

Why do failed Polish presidential candidates with decent performances tend to found their own parties?
Do you think Poland 2050 will make it into Parliament (it's still 3 years until the next election)? Kukiz'15 performed very well in polls, but the presidential election was in the same year and the 8 % performance was at least not overwhelming considering most polls in advance and support for Kukiz plummeted in the end. Additionally, Kukiz performed well better than Holownia in the pres. election.

- If you run for President, you probably have some sort of political ambition. Losing but putting in a respectable performance gives you political capital and temporarily locks in some degree of personal support. It's very straightforward.
- God knows, I don't want to think about it. If Trzaskowski wins, it is of course not impossible that the cohabitation breaks down and leads to a snap election. That is presumably part of his calculus.

Speaking of Holownia, he gave an interview yesterday complaining that in the process of running for president, he used up all his savings and burned all his bridges in his professional life and now has no idea what to do with himself, and I feel like I'm going insane. Are we really expected to believe that we came very close to sending to the second round someone with no political experience and no idea what he would do with his life after he lost or left office, who, if he won, would have been totally beholden to the extremely establishment advisors (former Tusk-era ministers, retired generals, well-known academics, etc.) he kept pulling out of his hat during the campaign... and this would have been better than electing a regular politician?