Day: October 16, 2023
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NPR News: 10-16-2023 6AM EDT
The right-wing populist Law and Justice party is on course to win most seats in Poland’s general election, an exit poll suggests, but is unlikely to secure a third term in office, the BBC reports.
Known as PiS, it is set to win 36.6% of the vote, with the centrist opposition on 31%, says the Ipsos poll.
If that is correct, Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition has a better chance of forming a coalition.
He is aiming to end eight years of PiS rule under leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The PiS leader admitted he did not know if the party’s “success will be able to be turned into another term in power”.
Initial results give PiS the lead, but they reflect small towns and the countryside which are party strongholds. A second Ipsos poll published on Monday morning reinforced its first poll on Sunday evening.
“Poland won, democracy has won,” Mr Tusk, 66, told a large crowd of jubilant supporters in what felt like a victory rally in Warsaw. “This is the end of the bad times, this is the end of the PiS government.”
There were roars as the Ipsos poll flashed up on the screen and Mr Tusk appeared to loud cheers and chants of his name.
Supporters appeared stunned, and election officials said later that turnout was probably 72.9%, the highest since the fall of communism in 1989.
Polls closed at 21:00 local time, but there were still queues of voters reported well into the night in Warsaw and Krakow, and into the early hours in Wroclaw.
A larger proportion of 18-29 year-olds had turned out to vote than over-60s, Ipsos said.
PiS was heading for 198 seats in the 460-seat Sejm or parliament, according to the later poll, and would fall short of the 231 needed for a majority. It is unlikely to have much help from the far-right Confederation party, whose leader admitted it had fared far worse than expected, with a predicted 14 seats.