Polish public television published a misleading figure to give the appearance that the ruling left-liberals have a 20-point lead over their conservative rivals in upcoming elections.
The actual poll taken by the United Surveys agency for portal Wp.pl was on who voters think will win, and not who they will actually vote for.
When Poles were asked who they think will win by Wp.pl, 40 percent thought that Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO) would win, whereas 20.5 percent believed that the former ruling Conservatives (PiS) would, just 1 percent ahead of those who felt the centrist Third Way alliance would top the poll.
TVP published the poll as if these results indicated who Poles would actually vote for — an elementary mistake that just happened to favor the ruling party by putting it 20 points ahead, whereas, in all the other polls recently taken, the KO and PiS are running neck and neck, with PiS slightly ahead in most.
The TVP report caused a storm of protests online.
Marcin Duma, head of the IBRiS polling agency, took to X to say that “this was not an opinion poll on the state of the parties but a poll on perceptions regarding who voters thought would win the election.”
“Elementary school mistake,” said Jacek Gądek from news portal Gazeta.pl, while commentator and blogger Kataryna noted that the previous government had been criticized for manipulating news services and the new government had promised to clean up TVP’s act.
