Polish Politics and Elections

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

On the topic of the Smolensk air disaster, I hear there's a lot of discontent at PiS for another proof at their hypocrisy after 50 party members casually overlooked their own stay at home rules to celebrate.

This picture made the rounds of my Polish friends:

who are the people in the photo, from left to right? Some of those faces look familiar.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

late-minute prediction:
50.3% Rafal
49.7% Duda

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

For some reason we're discussing Donald Tusk's return to Polish politics again.

This time the plan seems more advanced than the last fifty times we went through this routine (apparently he might take over the leadership of PO on an interim basis at a special meeting of the national executive on Wednesday) but I'll still believe it when I see it.

Reminder that PO is polling at 16%, behind both PiS and the guy off Poland's Got Talent.

That's a pretty bad polling position for PO...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Could PSL end up being kingmaker?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Any way to follow coverage in "english"?

You could probably find a liveblog. But not a livestream.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I am expecting a PiS defeat, but it's not a high confidence guess. Tusk has largely unified the non-PiS parties behind him.
Are Russia and Ukraine having voting in this election?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

132 out of 31,497 polling stations reporting. PO is now leading, 36.8%-36.2%.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How much opportunity does Poland's electoral process leave for vote rigging?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So as I understand it, the bad guys lost?

Declaring the result now is like declaring an American presidential election on the basis of 7% or so of the vote from Kentucky and Indiana being counted.
Counting has been annoyingly slow.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Florida 2000 called, it said that vote counting is going slowly.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Chances PiS still make it?

Quite possible, but we don't have an awful lot to go by.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

We have the first city to finish counting and it's Częstochowa.

KO 35.8% (+7.4)
PIS 30.9% (-6.4)
Lewica 12.3% (-8.7)
TD/PSL 11.6% (+7.2)
KWN 5.9% (-0.1)

Changes from 2019

These changes certainly would be change of government territory assuming they get replicated nationally.