Local and regional elections in Poland, 7 April 2024

In April 2024, Poland’s right-wing opposition party defied predictions and secured the largest number of votes in regional authority elections, the key barometer of national support. Nonetheless, in spite of internal divisions over the abortion issue and concerns that it is prioritising settling scores with its predecessor over delivering on its election promises, the ruling coalition secured roughly the same vote share as in last October’s parliamentary election.

The context: The first electoral test since October 2023

In December 2023, a new coalition government led by Donald Tusk, who had served as Polish prime minister between 2007-14 and then European Council President from 2014-19, was sworn in, ending the eight-year rule of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS, ECR) party. Donald Tusk is leader of the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO, EPP), which once again became the country’s main governing party. The new coalition also includes the eclectic Third Way (Trzecia Droga) alliance – which itself comprises the agrarian-centrist Polish Peasant Party (PSL, EPP), the liberal-centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050, RE) grouping around TV personality-turned-politician Szymon Hołownia,m and the smaller New Left (Nowa Lewica, S&D) party, the main component of the broader Left (Lewica) electoral alliance.

Beyond electing thousands of councillors and local mayors, April’s local elections were the first major test of party support since the October 2023 parliamentary election (see Sczerbiak, 2023). As second-order elections held shortly after a major parliamentary poll, the local elections took place in a phase of the electoral cycle that was expected to be favorable to the newly elected governing parties, which where still enjoying a post-election honeymoon. From the beginning of January, most polls showed that, for the first time in years, Civic Platform had overtaken Law and Justice. At the same time, the former ruling party was plagued by infighting and struggled to develop an effective opposition strategy. PiS appeared to spend too much time on issues that consolidated its core voter base, but failed to broaden its appeal.

Local elections have always been challenging for Law and Justice, with much of the media focus devoted to the high-profile mayoral contests in Poland’s major urban centres, which are liberal-left strongholds (Gagatek, 2020). In fact, as the only local government tier contested mainly on party lines, the aggregated vote share in elections to the 16 regional authorities(known as voivoidships) is the key barometer of national support. Poland’s regional councils also play an important role in managing and distributing EU funds and are a key source of local party patronage (Swianiewicz et al., 2008).

The results: Law and Justice defies expectations

In the event, Law and Justice defied predictions that its vote share would collapse and actually came in first in the regional poll with 34.3% nationwide, ahead of Civic Platform on 30.6%. Law and Justice secured the largest vote share in seven out of the 16 regional authorities. The result was thus a major success for Law and Justice, both politically and psychologically, allowing its leader Jarosław Kaczyński to silence his internal party critics and claim that the party had rebounded from its post-election dip. It sent a powerful signal that Poland remained deeply divided politically and that Law and Justice was still a strong challenger to the coalition government.

For its part, in a major setback to Donald Tusk’s ambitions, Civic Platform was bitterly disappointed that it failed to overtake Law and Justice. Emboldened by strong polling at the beginning of the year, in January Civic Platform had rejected the idea of standing a joint candidates list with the Left for the regional assemblies, beingconfident that it could defeat Law and Justice without entering into such a coalition.

The Third Way scored 14.3%, which was roughly what it secured in October 2023 (14.4%). The alliance had hoped to capitalize on Hołownia’s popularity in the high profile post of speaker of the Sejm, Poland’s more powerful lower parliamentary chamber, where he has often used his experience as a TV presenter to create a humorous and engaging spectacle (sometimes dubbed ‘Sejmflix’ in the media, see Rainsford, 2023). The most disappointing result, however, was for the Left, which had expectations of securing a good double-digit result but only won 6.3%, less than the disappointing 8.6% that it had obtained six months earlier.

Some commentators explain the outcome through much lower turnout among supporters of the governing parties. For sure, at 52% turnout was significantly below last October’s record 74% and even down three points on the 55% in the previous 2018 local elections. However, the context in which these elections were held was very different to the emotionally charged and highly polarised parliamentary campaign, and even the previous local polls took place at the beginning of the electoral cycle leading up to the 2019 legislative vote. This time around, many voters were exhausted and simply ‘switched off’ from politics. Moreover, turnout is always much lower in local than parliamentary elections, and this was actually the second highest turnout recorded in any post-1989 local government poll.

Nonetheless, average turnout was certainly somewhat higher in Law and Justice’s strongholds in Southern and Eastern Poland than areas where the governing parties enjoyed greater support. There was also much lower turnout among some of the demographic groups that voted heavily for the new governing parties in October 2023. For example, among the youngest voters, turnout fell from 68.8% to 38.6%, while Law and Justice moved from fifth to second place in this demographic with its vote share increasing from 14.9% to 21.6% (Sawka, 2024; wPolityce, 2024). While the overall impact of this shift was limited, as there are many more middle-aged and older voters in Poland than younger ones, the lower turnout of young voters suggests that differential mobilization indeed favored the PiS-led opposition.

The campaign: Divisions over abortion and broken promises

The local elections took place at a time when the first serious divisions were starting to emerge among the governing camp’s ideologically heterogenous coalition partners, particularly the Third Way and the Left. Much of the tension focused on the highly contentious issue of abortion, leading to a major row that undermined the show of unity that facilitated the coalition’s election victory. Many commentators felt that the huge protests against the Polish constitutional tribunal’s October 2020 ruling, which found abortions on the grounds of serious and irreversible birth defects to be unconstitutional, was a key turning point in the PiS government’s slump in popular support. The government never really recovered and eventually lost the next election. As a consequence, the abortion issue has assumed huge symbolic importance for many of the new government’s supporters, who hoped that it would introduce legislative changes to expand access to it.

However, although there is broad consensus within the ruling coalition that the tribunal’s ruling should be reversed, the three parties are very divided on what precise form the reform should take. A new phase of confrontation began when Szymon Hołownia announced that parliamentary work on legislation aimed at liberalising the abortion law would not begin until after the first round of the local elections. His announcement was met with anger from the Left, which claimed that he was delaying the debate because some Third Way election candidates, especially those standing for the Peasant Party, were afraid of offending local parish priests, who remain influential civil society actors in smaller towns and rural areas (Tilles, 2024).

The fact that there were raised expectations on this issue undoubtedly contributed to disillusionment among some of those who had voted for the governing parties in October 2023. Moreover, by delaying the parliamentary vote for apparent electoral advantage, Szymon Hołownia appeared to be using his position as Sejm speaker to further his own grouping’s interests. At the same time, the Left failed to derive any electoral benefit from making abortion the centre-piece of its local election campaign.

Another factor was the perception that the governing coalition was unable to deliver on its election promises, particularly regarding the liberalisation of the abortion law. Civic Platform had pledged to implement 100 reforms in its first 100 days in office (‘100 konkretów na 100 dni’), which fell in the middle of the local election campaign, but only delivered on a very small proportion (most commentators estimated around one-in-ten) (Tilles, 2024b). The government postponed, e.g., the introduction of its high profile pledge to increase the annual tax-fee income threshold to 60,000 złoties. The governing parties’ excuses – that they had to compromise because they were part of a ruling coalition, or that their promises were not to be taken literally – were unconvincing to most voters.

This coincided with the fact that voters appeared to be rapidly losing interest in the new government’s so-called ‘reckoning’ (in Polish: rozliczenie) with its Law and Justice predecessor’s alleged abuses of power. In particular, the three high-profile special parliamentary investigative commissions that the government set up failed to develop much traction. Even among voters supportive of this process of settling of accounts, there was an increasing perception that the government needed to offer a more positive policy agenda.

Outlook: Rafał Trzaskowski set for presidential challengerin 2025

The local election results also suggest that the Polish political landscape has not changed very much following Donald Tusk’s return to the Prime minister’s office. For sure, while Civic Platform did not manage to secure first place independently of its governing partners, the three groupings that make up the ruling coalition still secured 51% of the regional vote (compared with 54% last October). Civic Platform came first in nine of the 16 regional authorities and, along with its allies, secured control of twelve of them.

Donald Tusk’s party also dominated the mayoral elections in larger towns and cities. The most significant of these from a national perspective was the Warsaw mayoral race, where Civic Platform-backed incumbent Rafał Trzaskowski, who narrowly lost the 2020 Polish presidential election, won a decisive first-round victory with 57.4% of the votes, bolstering his position as the party’s most likely candidate in the 2025 presidential race.

Nonetheless, although Law and Justice lost control of three regional councils compared with 2018, by retaining power in at least four where it has an outright majority, the party exceeded expectations that it would do very well to regain control of three.

The local elections also served as a prelude to the June European Parliament (EP) election campaign, which began seamlessly after the council results were announced. While the local polls appeared to leave Law and Justice well positioned, EP elections have traditionally been very difficult for the party because turnout has generally been very low overall (between 2004-14 it ranged from 21-25%) but higher among better-off, urban voters who tend to support the liberal-centrist and left-wing parties. In fact, in the previous 2019 EP election Law and Justice actually secured its best ever result in any election (45%) but was able to mobilise its supporters by treating the poll as a prelude to the parliamentary election held later that year, reflected in the 46% turnout level. This will be very difficult to repeat because the June EP election is much more likely to play out as a classic ‘second order’ poll. Ironically, the fact that Law and Justice did so surprisingly well in the local elections has also shifted expectations, making it the front-runner, which would likely work in Civic Platform’s favour. Three months later, the Civic Platform would win the most votes in the EP election, obtaining its first outright victory over PiS since the 2014 European election.

The data

References

Gagatek, W. & Tybuchowska-Hartlińska, K. (2020). The 2018 regional elections in Poland. Regional & Federal Studies, 30(3), 475–91.

Rainsford, S. (2023, 10 December). Poland’s popcorn moment as pro-EU leader Tusk returns to power. BBC.

Sawka, N. (2024, 13 April). Frekwencja dwudziestolatków. W 2023 – 69 proc., 2024 – 39 proc. Powody poważne, ale jest i banalny. Oko.press.

Swianiewicz, P., Herbst, J., Lackowska, M., & Mielczarek, A. (2008). Szafarze darów europejskich: kapitał społeczny a realizacja polityki regionalnej w polskich województwach. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.

Szczerbiak, A. (2023). Why did the opposition win the Polish election? LSE Europp Blog.

Tilles, D. (2024, 6 March). Polish ruling coalition partners clash after speaker delays bills to liberalise abortion law. Notes from Poland.

Tilles, D. (2024b, 18 March). Polish government has fulfilled only 12 of Tusk’s promised 100 policies in first 100 days in office. Notes from Poland.

wPolityce (2024, 8 April). Tak głosowano w wyborach samorządowych. Kogo poparli najmłodsi i najstarsi? Jak wybierano w zależności od wykształcenia? Wpolityce.