Polish Politics and Elections

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Well Duda is trying to rally his base

Well, yes. This election is going to come down to whether the Korwinistas hate muh socialism or muh LGBT more.

What is more interesting is that this is still less radical than his first-round rhetoric - they've partially retreated to the least controversial anti-LGBT proposition.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

As a side note, I wonder if those Korwinista votes are even still there to be won by Trzaskowski. The 2019 Konfederacja vote was quite evenly spread throughout the country, which is, broadly speaking, he standard vote distribution for one of Korwin's parties. The exit poll (which I'm not sure I trust) claimed Bosak only got 64% of those voters and his vote, despite being almost identical in percentage terms (6.8 to 6.78), was much more concentrated along the Eastern border, which would indicate he brought some of the LPR genepool vote back.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

As a side note, I wonder if those Korwinista votes are even still there to be won by Trzaskowski. The 2019 Konfederacja vote was quite evenly spread throughout the country, which is, broadly speaking, he standard vote distribution for one of Korwin's parties. The exit poll (which I'm not sure I trust) claimed Bosak only got 64% of those voters and his vote, despite being almost identical in percentage terms (6.8 to 6.78), was much more concentrated along the Eastern border, which would indicate he brought some of the LPR genepool vote back.

The geographical dynamic seems to be that nationalist Confederates do better in Podkarpackie (and to a lesser extent the rest of the East) while libertarian Confederates do better in small to mid sized cities.

Its worth noting that Bosak consistently underpolled Confederate parliamentary support for one reason or another but reduced some of the gap by running a solid campaign. At the beginning he was polling around 3% while KON was polling between 4% to 8%, then by the end he got up to 6.8% when KON's poll numbers increased to between 7% and 11%. There were probably a sizable number of 2018 supporters who didn't show up or voted for Żółtek.

Yes, that was very noticeable. Bosak is not a natural libertarian and the bizarre backroom games around his selection as the candidate probably put some off. Which raises one question - if they didn't turn up for Bosak, are they really going to come out to vote for a PO candidate?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Very high probability of the margin being so close that the Supreme Court gets involved and we get some Bush v. Gore-tier clusterf---.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Very high probability of the margin being so close that the Supreme Court gets involved and we get some Bush v. Gore-tier clusterf---.

Okay, is the Supreme Court PiS friendly?

The judges of the particular chamber of the Supreme Court which is responsible for election matters were selected by the PiS-controlled National Council of the Judiciary. They didn't act in an overtly partisan manner when PiS demanded recounts in several Senate seats after the parliamentary election, but those protests were rather desperate and less was at stake.

Since you think it's going to be a toss-up: Do you disagree with Kataak's description of Duda's turnout advantage?

No, I think Duda is favoured for the reasons Kataak listed. The areas that favour Trzaskowski should generally be closer to 'maxing out' than those that favour Duda (although we haven't had turnout this high since 1995, so god knows where the ceiling is). However, I think it's unlikely that the winner will get more than 52% of the vote, and they may get much less than that - for example, Marcin Palade (very right-wing pollster/psephologist whose interest in psephology usually trumps his partisan commitments)'s polling average is currently showing Duda could win with 50.1% of the vote. Duda will probably win a scrappy, messy victory, and Trzaskowski can only win an even scrappier, messier one.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Rule of thumb, people: anything 'leaked' before 4/5pm in Poland is either nonsense or just not useful.

We will get official turnout reports throughout the day, but it sounds like turnout is down quite a bit from round one. I would assume that, if it holds, it would be at least marginally good news for Duda. Although I'm not sure even that much is clear.

Bear in mind that an unusually high number of people seem to have voted in the morning last time. The 'typical' pattern is that morning turnout is tilted towards conservatives and is balanced out by an evening rush of liberals. We don't know if that pattern has genuinely changed or if people were just afraid of long queues that ultimately didn't materialise.

It would be very unusual for turnout to fall in the second round, the only time that happened was in 1990 under extremely particular circumstances.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Based on the distribution of the vote so far it does seem as though rural voters are likely fueling the turnout bump. But a lot of city people are in boutique resort towns on holiday and younger urban voters may indeed show up late as they usually do.

Correct - rural turnout is still below the national average but less so than it was at this time in the first round, while urban turnout is the inverse.

https://twitter.com/MarcinPalade/status/1282297030229008385?s=19

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Walmart shopper, make sure you're not getting your info from the Kondominium Twitter account. That guy is infamous for s--tting up Polish Twitter with misinformation.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Generally guys do not trust any "SEMI-OFFICIAL" information about turnout or results, they are most often bullsh**t.

The pro-PO anons seem to be converging on DUDA IS ON 50.4 GO VOTE NOW. Maybe Schetyna's Israeli PR guys taught them about gevalt?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I very, very strongly believe in the hellworld outcome of one of them winning by 50.1/49.9.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I voted by mail on Thursday, because Scotland

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What will be the biggest city that PiS will win in a roughly 50-50 result?

Probably Rzeszów, maybe Lublin.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What will be the biggest city that PiS will win in a roughly 50-50 result?

Probably Rzeszów, maybe Lublin.

Actually Radom is also a strong possibility, I always forget it's bigger than Rzeszów.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

More turnout maps.

Who is this map good for?

TBH good and bad for both candidates. Although weak increases in Lower Silesia and Greater Poland are not really good for Trzaskowski.

It also bears stating that in some areas, even strongholds, the Voivodeship is too large of a geography to infer anything from. Rural Mazovia is going to vote very differently than Warsaw, her environs, or Plock.

I just found a county map of the increases.

https://twitter.com/pdjezierski/status/1282365603823714306?s=19

Biggest increases seem to be in places where people usually go on vacation.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The margin of error is 1%, btw. Ipsos are saying it's too close to call.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The margin of error is 1%, btw. Ipsos are saying it's too close to call.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Would the exit poll model in votes abroad or not?

No. It is also missing late votes that were heavily urban. I wouldn't be surprised to see the late exit poll have exactly the opposite numbers.

It's over, stop saying stupid things.

Thank you, random American child.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

As a side note, I wonder if those Korwinista votes are even still there to be won by Trzaskowski. The 2019 Konfederacja vote was quite evenly spread throughout the country, which is, broadly speaking, he standard vote distribution for one of Korwin's parties. The exit poll (which I'm not sure I trust) claimed Bosak only got 64% of those voters and his vote, despite being almost identical in percentage terms (6.8 to 6.78), was much more concentrated along the Eastern border, which would indicate he brought some of the LPR genepool vote back.

Well, if you believe the exit poll breakdowns, Duda won Bosak voters 52-48 but lost 2019 Konfederacja voters 39-61...

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Kosiniak-Kamysz would have won.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

From EUElects liveblog:

Andrzej Duda won in Canada. He recieved 4720, while Trzaskowski recieved 3119. Despite this fact, Duda won only in Toronto, while Trzaskowski in Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa.

I thought the overseas vote was supposed to be pro-Trazskowski?

It is...outside of NA.

Toronto's probably got more of an "Ethnoburban Conservative" streak--the same thing that buoys Ford Nation...

Interesting that overseas voters in North America being more right wing is a thing for pretty much every country that has overseas voting that I know of. In the US I guess it's explained by osmosis from the Republicans and much more conservative public discourse, but I wonder why this is happening in Toronto - it's not like Fordismo has a huge media presence or an influential political party (seeing that everyone hates Dough now). Perhaps more culturally conservative people moving to places with larger Polish communities, i.e. only Toronto?

Much of the Toronto diaspora has been there since the 80s. Same with e.g. Chicago. Older anti-communists getting their view of the mother country from hard-right sources and voting accordingly.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

One nice thing about this result: we won't have to go through the circus a special mayoral election in Warsaw would be guaranteed to turn into.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Trzaskowski has announced today he wants to build a social movement he referred to as the 'New Solidarity'. This is possibly the most Polish liberal intelligentsia thing imaginable.

well not really they are both right-wingers.

What the flying f**k Duda is if not a right-winger?

No, he's saying both Trzaskowski and Duda are right-wingers.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

One nice thing about this result: we won't have to go through the circus a special mayoral election in Warsaw would be guaranteed to turn into.

My ing God, I can't even imagine Kaleta or Jaki running now - sh**tshow guaranteed.

Kaleta v. Kierwinski/Halicki v. Zandberg v. Korwin. That is all.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Szymon Hołownia's Poland 2050 now has its first MP in the form of Left MP Hanna Gill-Piątek, who was, for a time, the manager of Biedroń's presidential campaign.

As someone who has heard quite a few stories about Gill-Piątek, I would at this point like to say 'lol' and wish Hołownia the very best of luck.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

It's hard to tell if it's real or just brinksmanship, but the government might be on the brink of collapse over, of all things, animal rights.

After Duda won re-election, the first item on PiS' to-do list was a major government reshuffle to reduce the number of ministries (which, to be fair, have been multiplying at a bizarre rate under Morawiecki, it's hard to keep track of what some of the current ones are even supposed to do), which would have meant cutting their two coalition partners, Zbigniew Ziobro's Solidarna Polska (fash tendency) and Jaroslaw Gowin's Alliance (Thatcherite tendency), who currently hold two ministries each, down to size. They obviously hated this and fought like hell to retain their ministries, which was a non-starter for PiS. It seemed a compromise had been reached wherein they'd get one ministry each as PiS wanted but get additional posts in the Prime Minister's office, but events have intervened.

First, PiS tried to push through a bill that would grant immunity to any government official who had committed a crime if they could argue that crime had been committed in order to fight the pandemic. Ziobro, who has been waging war against PM Morawiecki for a long time now (a court ruled the other day that Morawiecki had broken the law by trying to organise an all-postal presidential election before a law allowing for it had been passed) refused to support the bill, and it was pulled from the parliamentary agenda yesterday, much to Kaczynski's displeasure.

Second, they committed themselves to a big animal rights package, including a ban on fur farming and major limits on ritual slaughter (which will now be allowed only for domestic consumption). Kaczynski is a noted animal lover, so his personal quirks and the desire to win over more moderate voters actually coincided for once. Ziobro and Gowin were against this, while PSL and Konfederacja smelled blood in the water and pounced on the opportunity to outflank Kaczynski. In the end, the bill passed with the support of PO and the Left, the Minister of Agriculture (who voted against) is considering resigning, and PiS politicians are now publicly hinting that the coalition may end over this.