Sunday’s European Parliamentary (EUP) elections saw a surge in support for conservative-nationalists across Western Europe, though they also saw Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal-globalists winning more votes than any other national party for the first time in a decade. His Civic Coalition (KO) came out on top with 37.06% while his conservative-nationalist opponents from the Law & Justice (PiS) party that ruled Poland over the past eight years before his return to power scored 36.16%.
Compared to last fall’s Polish parliamentary elections, where KO obtained 30.7% of the vote while PiS won 35.38%, this represents a 6.36% and 0.78% increase respectively. A superficial comparison of their back-to-back election results would suggest that liberal-globalist sentiment is on the rise, but that would be a specious conclusion since relevant data from other parties tells a different picture. These are the conservative-nationalist Confederation and KO’s ruling coalition allies from The Left and The Third Way.
Confederation scored 7.16% last fall and 12.08% on Sunday for a 4.92% increase while The Left and The Third Way both saw their support in society drop. The first obtained 8.61% before and 6.3% now for a 2.31% decrease while the second’s corresponding statistics are 14.4% last year and 6.91% this one for a whopping 7.49% decrease that slashed the party’s support by more than half. Of note, last fall’s national parliamentary elections saw a 74.4% turnout while this summer’s EUP elections was just 40.65%.
Seeing as how the drop in support for Tusk’s ruling coalition allies totaled 9.8% between the two elections while his party’s support rose by 6.36%, it can be surmised that the bulk of those who abandoned The Left and The Third Way voted for KO. The remainder of the latter’s then seemingly switched to Confederation with a few going to PiS. Importantly, Polish outlet Onet’s exit poll showed that over 30% of voters aged 18-29 supported Confederation, making it the most popular party among them.
Last fall’s elections saw second-place-finisher KO form the incumbent coalition government after The Third Way, which was created to siphon comparatively more “centrist” supporters away from PiS, and The Left agreed to ally with it instead of the then-incumbents. Just like the narrative about Biden’s 2020 victory was that a coalition of disparate malcontents united for a shared cause, irrespective of whatever one’s views are about whether or not fraud was committed, so too did the same thing happen in Poland.
Since then, Tusk provoked Poland’s worst political crisis since the 1980s through his persecution of the opposition, two members of whom that used to serve with the former government and were at the center of a major scandal just won seats in the EUP. The Left supports his moves so some of their voters might have decided to back KO during the latest elections out of fear that some of the population might rally behind PiS in protest and help it eke it out a victory if they clung to their party instead.
As for The Third Way, however, their supposedly “centrist”-inclined formerly PiS base were probably spooked by everything that happened since the last elections but apparently weren’t convinced by their “original” party into returning to it during the latest elections. A credible poll from early spring about Poles’ attitudes towards Ukraine and the farmers’ protests could shed some light into their thinking since they might have begun to partially blame the legacy of PiS’ policies for these interconnected problems.
In that event, Confederation’s hardline approach towards Ukraine might have become much more appealing to them since it proverbially kills two birds with one stone by aiming to pull Poland out of this dangerous proxy war in parallel with protecting their country’s agricultural industry. Some of PiS’ base (both current members and Third Way defectors) might also have turned on the party after learning more about its liberal approach towards the legal immigration of civilizationally dissimilar individuals.
The former ruling party allowed a whopping 250,000 of them into Poland, which was more than France and Germany, despite claiming to be stalwart defenders of traditional Polish society. By contrast, Confederation wants to severely curtail all forms of immigration and place limits on the number of people from civilizationally dissimilar societies alongside deporting all those that break the law. It’s therefore easy to see how they could have attracted former PiS voters that defected from The Third Way.
Considering that PiS’ electoral support only marginally grew while KO’s is arguably attributable to its coalition allies directly voting for it out of fear that some of the population might rally behind PiS in protest and help it eke out a win if they clung to their parties instead, the only party that really increased its support since the last election is Confederation. The importance of it winning more of the under-30 vote than anyone else also can’t be overestimated since it proves that they’ve tapped into the zeitgeist.
With these factual observations in mind, it can be concluded that the Polish Right is still strong despite Tusk’s liberal-globalists winning the latest EUP elections, but with the caveat being that the conservative-nationalist movement in Poland is moving closer towards Confederation’s vision and away from PiS’. If Confederation was never formed, then PiS would have presumably won their share of the vote and emerged victorious yet again in this latest election, but the Right would never have evolved in that case.
As it presently stands, Confederation has a real chance to redefine what it means to be a conservative-nationalist in Poland similar in spirit to how the complementary Make America Great Again and America First movements have already done in the US, though they still need more time to reach that level. Nevertheless, what they’ve achieved thus far in the latest EUP elections is impressive, and it shows that they’re truly a force to be reckoned with after they won the under-30 vote.
