Success for PiS
Local elections in Poland: Tusk cannot expand its power base
The Prime Minister of Poland: Donald Tusk. photo
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
The local elections were seen as the first test of sentiment for Poland’s pro-European government. The result shows that the country remains deeply divided. The PiS continues to dominate in rural regions.
In the local elections in Poland, the new head of government Donald Tusk failed to expand the power base for his liberal-conservative citizens’ coalition. The national conservative opposition party PiS, which ruled the country from 2015 to 2023, became the strongest political force according to initial forecasts.
Tusk’s citizens’ coalition was again able to secure the important post of Warsaw mayor and also scored points in other major cities. The elections were seen as a first test of sentiment for Tusk’s center-left alliance, which has ruled Poland for four months.
Tusk: “Don’t complain, get to work!”
The Prime Minister drew a mixed conclusion the day after the election. “What is happy? A record victory in the cities, a lead in the regional assemblies,” wrote Tusk on the X platform (formerly Twitter). What is annoying for the citizens’ coalition is the lack of mobilization of young voters and the poor performance in rural areas and the east of the country. “The conclusion for us? Don’t complain, get to work!”
In the election of the 16 regional administrations, 34.27 percent of the votes went to the opposition PiS, as the state electoral commission announced after all votes were counted. The official final result is not expected to be announced until Wednesday.
Warsaw’s mayor Trzaskowski strengthened
Tusk’s citizens’ coalition ended up in second place with 30.59 percent. She achieved a great success in the capital Warsaw: the incumbent mayor Rafal Trzaskowski was confirmed in office in the first round of voting with 57.41 percent of the vote. The 52-year-old Trzaskowski was narrowly defeated by incumbent Andrzej Duda in the 2020 presidential election. He has ambitions to run again in next year’s presidential election.
Things also went well for Tusk’s party in the port city of Gdansk and in the fourth largest city of Lodz. In Gdansk, Mayor Aleksandra Dulkiewicz prevailed in the first round of voting, and in Lodz, incumbent Hanna Zdanowska also managed to be re-elected.
PiS is still there
The PiS scored points in the predominantly Catholic east and south of the country. “As Mark Twain once said: The news of my death is greatly exaggerated,” joked party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski on election night. “This result shows that we might do significantly better in the general election today, perhaps we could even come to power.”
The results of the local elections differ surprisingly little from those of the parliamentary elections last October, said sociologist Jaroslaw Flis to the newspaper “Rzeczpospolita”. The PiS, whose poll numbers had declined since it was voted out in the autumn, had bucked the trend and preserved its holdings in the regions. “Anyone who believed that the PiS would be completely driven into the ground now has no reason to be satisfied.”
Hard work for coalition government
Before the local elections, there was hope in the Tusk camp that the PiS would suffer a crushing defeat. The fact that things turned out differently is also due to the fact that Tusk’s coalition government is currently working on many construction sites and is not making good progress everywhere. The EU Commission has now released billions in aid that it had previously frozen because of the PiS’s controversial judicial reforms. But rolling back these reforms and restoring the rule of law is proving to be a lengthy and complicated process.
Tusk won the parliamentary election with a promise, among other things, to loosen Poland’s strict abortion laws. But this project is encountering resistance from Tusk’s coalition partner, the Christian conservative Third Way. The party received 14.25 percent of the vote in the regional administration elections. The left-wing alliance Lewica ended up with 6.32 percent. The right-wing extremist Konfederacja received 7.23 percent of the vote. According to preliminary information from the electoral commission, voter turnout was 51.33 percent.