Poland election: Opposition eyes power as PiS falls short

Three political left-of-center groups in Poland, if they can form a working alliance, have won a combined a majority of the vote in Sunday's election with 90% of ballots counted.

The largest party is the Civic Coalition alliance led by former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk. Combined with the Third Way alliance and the Left party, the three groups were on course for 52.6% of the vote. 

Meanwhile, the ruling national conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) won more votes than any other party (36.4%), but fell short of securing a governing majority. Nevertheless, its leaders still say they want the first shot at forming a government and have not conceded defeat as yet. 

Polish President Andrzej Duda now has 30 days time to convene parliament, and another 14 to nominate a candidate for prime minister.

Voter turnout in Sunday's elections was the highest ever in recent Polish history. Projected to come in at nearly 73%, voter turnout even eclipsed the 63% participation that led to the end of communism in the country in 1989.

In some cities, like Wroclaw, voting dragged on until 3:00 a.m., as voters, mostly young, flooded polling stations.

Observers say young and female voters, motivated by the issue of abortion rights — which the ruling PiS has sought to curtail and Donald Tusk has promised to liberalize — turned out in large numbers to support opposition parties.

"Until recently, half of women said they would not vote," sociologist Justyna Kajta of SWPS University in Warsaw told AFP news agency. "Now these exit polls actually show more women than men voted."

Poland's 2019 election had a turnout of 61.7%, and that was far higher than the previous few parliamentary elections, where turnout was at or around just 50%. 

A so-called late exit poll from the polling agency Ipsos shows the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party appears to have obtained 198 seats. 

That figure is a sharp fall from the current slim majority Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki's party has held for the past eight years.

Even with the seats of the far-right Confederation party as a coalition partner, PiS would not have a majority.

The Monday morning poll combines half of votes counted with the results of an exit poll carried out during Sunday's election.

It shows the ruling nationalist conservative Law and Justice party with 36.6% of the votes cast.

The opposition Civic Coalition led by Donald Tusk garnered 31% of the vote, according to Ipsos, while the centrist Third Way coalition had 13.5%. 

The Left party gathered 8.6% and the far-right Confederation, PiS's only natural ally won 6.4% of the vote.

"Democracy has won... This is the end of the PiS government," Tusk told party members after early polls.

For any government to pass laws, it would need at least 231 seats in the Sejm, Poland's 460-seat lower house of parliament.

rc/wmr (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)

The ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party's campaign manager, Joachim Brudzinski, has told Poland's RMF FM radio broadcaster that his party won and will seek to former a government under Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

"No matter how you look at it, we won," Brudzinski said.

It is up to Polish President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, to call upon a party to try to build a government.

Cezary Tomczyk, vice-chairman of Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition party, has said the governing party will seek to do everything to try to maintain power.

PiS looks to have lost its majority, but emerged as the largest party with 36.6% of the vote, according to a Monday morning poll. However, the party looks unlikely to form enough coalition partnerships to form a government, paving the way for potentially huge change after eight years of nationalist rule.

It's unclear how PiS could realistically keep its hold on power unless it managed to win over some lawmakers from opposition parties. However, that appears unlikely as it would require a large number of lawmakers to change allegiances.

The co-leader of the center-right Polish Third Way coalition, which emerged as the third-largest party in third in Sunday's election on a reported 13.5% has ruled out any coalition with the nationalist Law and Justice party.

"I am ruling out such a coalition... people who voted for us wanted change, they wanted PiS removed from power," Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told private radio RMF FM.

Three opposition parties — Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition, Third Way and the
New Left — ran separately but with the same promises of seeking to oust Law and Justice.