Polish Politics and Elections

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I haven't voted in Senate races since they introduced single-member seats. And now in my district (Warsaw-44) KO runs Ujazdowski, which makes me even less inclined to vote here.

I'm going to cast a protest vote for Kasprzak, even though he is solely the candidate of the activists and the Extremely Online and thus definitely isn't going to win, in the vain hope that a nice big number of votes for the 'fyck off Grzesiek, and take your wannabe Tories with you' option will get the opposition to wise up next time. It just feels a bit more constructive.

This makes sense. I guess I'll do the same.

Also: hey, we're living in the same district!

I currently live in the UK, but votes from abroad go into 44.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I haven't voted in Senate races since they introduced single-member seats. And now in my district (Warsaw-44) KO runs Ujazdowski, which makes me even less inclined to vote here.

I'm going to cast a protest vote for Kasprzak, even though he is solely the candidate of the activists and the Extremely Online and thus definitely isn't going to win, in the vain hope that a nice big number of votes for the 'fyck off Grzesiek, and take your wannabe Tories with you' option will get the opposition to wise up next time. It just feels a bit more constructive.

This makes sense. I guess I'll do the same.

Also: hey, we're living in the same district!

I currently live in the UK, but votes from abroad go into 44.

You guys at least have chance to vote on decent candidate in Sejm elections. In my electoral district for the Sejm generally every leader of the list is some sort of a mistake (Zimoch for PO, Gliński for PiS, Trela for SLD), not even mentioning the Senate where there are two candidates of opposition and thanks to that PiS candidate might win.

Trela is a surprise, he seemed so comfortable with that ridiculous 'MUREM ZA HANKĄ' coalition that I assumed he'd switch to PO.

And of course the person after him, who might actually also get a seat if the polls are right, is Hanna Gill-Piątek, which... lol.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Speaking of turnout, I don't think we can read that much into it. Before 2015 it was widely expected that a high turnout will benefit PO, as PiS had more limited support, and thus faring well with low turnout (like in 2005). But that obviously changed.

To be fair, 50% is hardly stellar turnout. I wonder if it ends up closer to 60% whether the PiS majority could be in danger.

Marcin Palade (who knows his sh**t) is projecting 56-57% turnout based on this, but the increase so far seems to be highest in smaller towns and rural areas in the west, which are increasingly PiS-leaning.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

If early turnout reports mean anything they're, uh, not good for the opposition parties.https://mobile.twitter.com/LLemaniak/status/1183347295439466496

Turnout is quite high in PiS strongholds (although I suspect this is often the case).

It has always been the case.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Palade is leaking the first wave of his exit poll on Twitter right now. He projects turnout as of 5pm at 44-46% (was 39% in 2015)

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

FIRST WAVE EXIT POLL FROM PALADE:

PiS 47.1
PO 26.3
Left 12.8
PSL 7.7
Confederation 5.3

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Take it for what it's worth, but one leaked exit poll has PiS with 48 (!!!) percent of the vote. So, wow.

If you mean https://twitter.com/MolSaski/status/1183409725226000384 , the next tweet is the person admitting it's a fake

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

FIRST WAVE EXIT POLL FROM PALADE:

PiS 47.1
PO 26.3
Left 12.8
PSL 7.7
Confederation 5.3

Are the seat allocation pure PR or d'hondt?

D'Hondt.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

More people than usual casting doubt on the leaked numbers, not sure if they're just getting excited or if there's something to it. But if they're accurate, the seat numbers should be something like PiS 250-ish, PO 130-ish, SLD 50-ish, PSL 20-ish, Confederation <10.

Its 41 Individual Constituencies so the PIS number should be quite a bit higher perhaps 250. Lewica and PSL should be quite a bit lower. Also why is Korwin not in your Calculation?

Ah. So not all 460 are allocated by PR.  As for Confederation I thought threshold for alliance is 7%

All 460 are allocated by PR, but the country is divided into 41 constituencies. And the Confederation is an alliance, but they've formed a shell party to get around the 8% threshold for formal coalitions.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Confderation 24

At 5.3%, this isn't even possible under the Polish electoral system.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Confderation 24

At 5.3%, this isn't even possible under the Polish electoral system.

I am not clear.  Is Confederation considered at party or list

They're an informal alliance who have registered a new shell party so they can be subject to the 5% threshold and not the 8% one, and receive a state subsidy. The Polish electoral system is D'Hondt with relatively small regional districts, meaning a score around the 5% threshold for a party whose support is not concentrated anywhere (as is the case for the Confederation) can only get them a very small number of seats.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Another leak from Palade:

PiS 45.7
PO 27.3
SLD 12.1
PSL 8.1
Confederation 6.0

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

PSL is doing pretty well.

Tactical opposition voters due to fear that PSL won't cross the threshold?

That doesn't really happen in particularly large numbers in Poland. They seemed to have a bit of momentum in the final week and their leader is fairly popular, but this is a surprise.

Of course, Palade could be wrong.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

And yes, I love the irony: the great anti-establishment fighter Kukiz ending up in bed with the most establishment of all parties.

It makes a bit more sense when you consider that both want politics to be nothing more than horse-trading among a few local politicians and businessmen - it's PSL's preferred model after all, and it's what first-past-the-post/JOW would likely result in if implemented in the Sejm.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

How quickly do results come in?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Grapevinesnail_01.jpg

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I should add at this point that the pollster conducting this exit poll has made major errors for the last two elections, so the final result may be significantly different. The exit poll for the local elections overestimated PSL by a full 4 points and the one for the EP elections underestimated PiS by 3 points and had the Confederation at 6% (which caused much schadenfreude when it turned out the next day they'd actually gotten 4.6%)

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The full exit poll can be found here - https://www.tvn24.pl/wybory-parlamentarne-2019/sondaz,475

If the demographic breakdowns are accurate, 6% of voters in the largest cities voted PSL and 9% of 2015 PO voters and 9% of 2015 Nowoczesna voters have switched to them. It would be hilarious if the constant drumbeat of OPPOSITION UNITY against the hordes of blood-sucking rurals accidentally legitimised the most rural party of them all in the eyes of urban liberals.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Starting to think Ipsos screwed up the exit poll pretty badly and now don't know what to make of the late poll.

Also, there are now four or five different estimates for PiS' seat count made by people who should know what they're talking about floating around Polish Twitter because no one can make the sums work for 239. None of them are higher than 234 seats.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

LATE POLL (changes from exit poll in brackets):

PiS 43.6 (-)
PO 27.4 (-)
SLD 12.4 (+0.5)
PSL 9.1 (-0.5)
KONF 6.4 (-)

Now this is a bit odd.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

 Did the German minority representative take a pro PiS stance in the last parliament?

Gods no. PiS tend to think of the German minority as an intruder and an enemy within.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What's the deal with Barbara Nowacka's Polish Initiative? Why didn't they join the SLD-Razem-Wiosna alliance?

She strung the left along claiming she just wanted it to unite and then went with what was most likely to get her into the Sejm. Like mother, like daughter  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Left_(Poland) .

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So much for the very smart people in this thread telling us not to believe the fake news exit polls!

There were reasons to warn people not to get too excited considering the pollster's recent track record, but I guess thanks for the unsolicited insult, random American?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Oh, it seems German Minority (MN) will retain its one MP.

For those unfamiliar, national minority committees are exempted from a 5% nationwide threshold, and only need to exceed 5% in their districts. The MN is running in Opole only.

Pretty comfortably in the end, with the same percentage as last time.

It's also the first time their vote didn't decrease in numerical terms from the last election.

Some absolutely fascinating patterns on display here wrt SLD and PSL in particular - PSL look set to win seats in Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Gdynia, Opole and both Western Pomerania constituencies where they're traditionally irrelevant, while SLD now perform better in cities than in some more provincial areas where they usually did much better.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Inicjatywa Polska: 4 MPs

Who got in besides Nowacka and Dariusz the pool attendant?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Apparently Konfederacja are already talking about splitting into two parliamentary groups, lol.