Polling shows Poland’s conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) has a good chance of beating the country’s left-wing opposition, according to Polish sociology professor Henryk Domański.
The professor, who is a sociologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), told Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper that polling shows the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) at 36-37 percent have stayed stable despite the fact that Brussels is blocking Poland’s allocation of funds from the EU Recovery Fund. He said he believes that this means the ruling party’s message is striking home with its core supporters and reinforcing the view that the EU is guilty of trying to subjugate Poland. So far, the Polish public is blaming the opposition which has supported withholding these funds.
Domański said that the economic problems Poland is experiencing will not dent support for the ruling party either. This is because it is clear that these problems have to do with external global factors and the government will not be blamed for them. He noted that fuel prices are already falling and that the government is registering successes on the international stage. Apart from worsening EU relations, Poland has maintained a strong relationship with both the U.S. and Ukraine during the war.
Domański observed that the ruling party’s lead over its nearest rival, the liberal Civic Platform (PO), has remained stable for years. There does not seem to be “a political climate for change,” he asserted. The return of Donald Tusk to Polish politics from his post in the EU has not changed anything.
“Even a united opposition bloc would probably not be enough to be a dealbreaker,” he said. The only thing he thinks the opposition could do to change its fortunes would be to have a new leader in the shape of Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who lost the presidential election very narrowly to Andrzej Duda and polled 49 percent of the vote. His presence might persuade undecided voters that the Civic Platform had something new to offer.
The ruling party’s support, according to the Politico Europe Poll of Polls, is at 37 percent, 9 percent ahead of the Civic Platform. However, this is 6 percent down on where the ruling party was at the last parliamentary elections in 2019 when they scored a narrow majority in the Lower House but failed to secure a majority in the Senate.
Despite the government’s stances on both the war in Ukraine and the migration crisis on the border with Belarus, popular support for it has not risen significantly since it fell in the aftermath of the dispute over the Polish Constitutional Court’s ruling on the tightening of the abortion law. It has actually returned to where it was when the ruling party won the 2015 parliamentary elections and obtained a majority in the Lower House thanks to the Left failing to cross the election threshold for electoral coalitions.
