FILE – Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister addresses supporters at his party headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, on Oct. 15, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Polish pro-EU opposition parties have won a parliamentary majority in a tight general election, the poll commission said on Tuesday announcing complete results.

The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has been ruling for the last eight years, emerged first with 35.38% of the vote but is unlikely to form a majority.

The liberal Civic Coalition bloc finished second at 30.7%, but together with two minor parties, Third Way and Left, secured a majority of 248 lawmakers in the 460-seat Parliament’s lower chamber, the national poll commission said.

The Opposition also has a majority in the upper house, securing 66 of the 100 seats in the Senate.

Sunday’s vote saw the highest turnout since the fall of Communism, with more than 74% eligible voters casting ballots.

Nearly 41% took part in a controversial referendum on migration staged by the ruling Eurosceptics on election day, which was boycotted by the opposition.

The turnout was insufficient for the vote to be valid.

Poland’s liberal opposition on October 16 appeared on track to win a parliamentary majority, exit polls showed, a day after a national election which saw the highest turnout since the fall of Communism.

The surprise result would end eight years of rule by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, during which relations with the European Union — and in recent weeks with war-torn Ukraine — have dramatically soured.

The Opposition, led by former EU chief Donald Tusk, has billed the parliamentary elections as the “last chance” to save democracy.

“This is the end of grim times,” Mr. Tusk declared late on Sunday.

Putting the liberal opposition in power would bring a huge political shift in Poland, countering the PiS party’s nationalist hardline Catholic vision for the country.

The election was dominated by issues such as Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, migrants and women’s rights.

Aleksandra Metlewicz, an interior designer, said women’s rights were “crucial” to her in the vote.

The 33-year-old said she hoped Poland would come of the “Middle Ages”, in which she said it was stuck.

For voters in the capital Warsaw, where support for nationalists is traditionally lower, the outcome predicted in exit polls already heralded major changes.

Natalia Szydlik, a 20-year-old student, also hoped Poland’s strict abortion laws would be liberalised and said she had “big hopes that things will change”.

But, with votes still being counted, heavyweight politicians from both the ruling party and the opposition were largely silent on Monday.

Final results are expected on October 17.

Mr. Tusk has promised to liberalise abortion laws.

This issue, according to analysts, prompted an unprecedented mobilisation among women voters and helped tip the balance in favour of the liberal opposition parties.

“Until recently, half of women said they would not vote. Now these exit polls actually show more women than men voted,” said Justyna Kajta, a sociologist at SWPS University in Warsaw.

For Kajta, the turnout among women, predicted at 73.7%, was the main “positive surprise” of the election.

Projections based on preliminary results and exit polls by Ipsos on Monday showed Mr. Tusk’s Civic Coalition could win 158 seats in the 460-seat parliament.

Two smaller parties which are potential allies, Third Way and Left, were set to win 61 and 30 seats respectively.

That would give the three together a majority of 249.

The expected result is despite PiS throwing all available state resources into its campaign, controlling state television and painting Mr. Tusk as a corrupt villain.

PiS increased its nationalist rhetoric in its campaign and even entered a row with its war-torn neighbour Ukraine, despite huge Polish solidarity with Kyiv in the face of the Russian invasion.

Also Read | EU launches case against Poland over ‘Russian influence’ panel

To the opposition electorate, ending the PiS reign would also restore Poland’s reputation on international stage.

Mr. Tusk has pledged to rebuild relations with Brussels and to unblock EU funds frozen due to an ongoing standoff with Warsaw over the rule of law in Poland.

“I believe that now all these (international) ties will improve and normalise. But this will take some time,” Krzysztof Dabrowski, a pensioner from Warsaw, told AFP.

Mr. Tusk served as Poland’s Prime Minister between 2007 and 2014 and as European Council President between 2014 and 2019.

He managed to bring hundreds of thousands of Poles onto the streets in Poland ahead of the election, claiming that a million people had marched against PiS.

But some worried that he has been around too long.

Karol Jedlinski, a 42-year-old businessman, said he struggled to imagine Tusk leading Poland again.

“He is more of a figure of the past to me.”

But much still depends on President Andrzej Duda.

The conservative figure spoke to reporters on a visit to the Vatican on October 16, praising the high election turnout.

But he urged people to be patient and “wait for the results”. And while he congratulated the election “winners”, he stopped short of saying who he would back.

Analysts warn that any governing coalition formed by the opposition could face run-ins with the President, who is a PiS ally.

PiS meanwhile appeared defiant and has presented the election as a win, since it appeared to have garnered more votes than any other individual party.

Kaczynski said on October 15 he still had “hope” he could form a government.

“This is not a closed road for the moment,” he said.

The most likely coalition partner for PiS had been Confederation, a far-right party.

But the exit poll showed PiS and Confederation together would fall short of a majority, with a total of just 212 seats.

Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister addresses supporters at his party headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, on October 15, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Polish opposition leader Donald Tusk said that three opposition parties had sufficient votes to win the general election on Sunday after an exit poll projected that they had enough combined support to oust Law and Justice, the governing conservative nationalist party.

The Ipsos exit poll suggested that the opposition together has likely won 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm. Law and Justice, according to the projection, obtained 200 seats, while the far-right Confederation got 12 seats.

“I am the happiest man on earth,” Mr. Tusk said. “Democracy has won. Poland has won.”

Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski acknowledged that the outcome was uncertain.

Mr. Kaczynski told supporters at his headquarters that his party’s result, at nearly 37% of the vote, according to the exit poll, was a great success, but acknowledged it might not be able to keep power.

“The question before us is whether this success will be able to be turned into another term of office of our government, and we don’t know that yet. But we must have hope and we must also know that regardless of whether we are in power or in the opposition, we will implement this project in different ways,” Mr. Kaczynski said.

The exit poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Three opposition parties, Tusk’s Civic Coalition, Third Way and the New Left, ran on separate tickets but with the same promises of seeking to oust Law and Justice and restore good ties with the European Union.

Votes were still being counted and the state electoral commission says it expects to have final results by Tuesday morning.

Many Poles feel it is the most important election since 1989, when a new democracy was born after decades of communism. At stake are the health of the nation’s constitutional order, its legal stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and the foreign alliances of a country that has been a crucial ally to Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Law and Justice has eroded checks and balances to gain more control over state institutions, including the courts, public media and the electoral process itself.

Support for the party has shrunk since the last election in 2019 amid high inflation, allegations of cronyism and bickering with European allies. Law and Justice won nearly 44% of the vote in 2019, but has been polling in recent weeks at more than 30%.

Others see economic threats in the way the party has governed and believe that high social spending has helped to fuel inflation.

There is also a high level of state ownership in the Polish economy, and the governing party has built up a system of patronage, handing out thousands of jobs and contracts to its loyalists.

The EU, whose funding has driven much of the economic transformation, is withholding billions in funding to Poland over what it views as democratic erosion.

The fate of Poland’s relationship with Ukraine is also at stake. The Confederation party campaigned on an anti-Ukraine message, accusing the country of lacking gratitude to Poland for its help in Russia’s war.

While Poland has been a staunch ally of Ukraine and a transit hub for Western weapons, relations chilled over the Ukrainian grain that entered Poland’s market.

Around 29 million Poles from age 18 were eligible to vote. They were choosing 460 members of the lower house, or Sejm, and 100 for the Senate for four-year terms.

A referendum on migration, the retirement age and other issues is being held simultaneously. Opposition groups oppose the referendum, accusing the government of seeking to tap into emotions. Some called on voters to boycott the referendum.

More than 31,000 voting stations operated across Poland, while there were more than 400 voting stations abroad. In a sign of the emotions generated by the vote, more than 600,000 Poles registered to vote abroad.

On Friday, the Foreign Ministry fired its spokesman after he said that not all the votes cast abroad could be counted before the deadline for submitting them, which would cause them to be invalidated. The ministry said he was dismissed for spreading “false information.”

Individual parties need to get at least 5% of votes to win seats in parliament, while coalitions need at least 8% of votes.