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Opposition leader Donald Tusk may return as Poland’s prime minister, exit polls after Sunday’s parliamentary election suggested. Election results showed the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) in the lead but without enough votes to govern alone or with far-right parties.
PiS and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński are expected to win 36.8% of the vote, ahead of Tusk’s Civic Platform (31.8%). Civic Platform is expected to win 248 of the 460 seats in Poland’s lower house of parliament, along with two other parties, according to exit polls conducted by Ipsos.
“This is the end of a bad era, this is the end of Law and Justice’s rule,” Tusk told cheering supporters on Sunday night. “We did it. Poland won, democracy won.”
At the Law and Justice party headquarters, Kaczynski told his supporters that there were still ways for his party to return to power. “We have days of fighting and all kinds of tensions ahead of us,” the ultraconservative leader said. “We have to have hope and know that whether we are in government or in opposition, we will implement it differently. this project.”
If the final results are in line with the polls, Law and Justice will struggle to secure a third term in government, as its potential coalition partner, the far-right Federation, is expected to win only 6.2% of the vote, equivalent to 12 seats.
If the election results confirm that Law and Justice remains the largest party in Poland’s parliament, President Andrzej Duda will give it the opportunity to form a government for the first time.
The final results of the hotly contested election are not expected until Monday night or even Tuesday, as the Law and Justice party places a referendum on the ballot to push four issues at the heart of its campaign, which will complicate the counting process. More complex. Tusk called on voters to boycott the referendum.
During his election campaign, Tusk pledged to reposition Warsaw on a resolutely pro-European path, restore the independence of judges and release billions of euros withheld by the European Commission in its dispute with the Law and Justice government over judicial reform. funds.
The vote is seen as the EU’s most important election of the year and could redefine Brussels’ relationship with Central and Eastern Europe’s largest member state after years of feuding.
The election could also ease recent tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv, which have been sparked in large part by the Law and Justice party’s re-election campaign. Law and Justice is at loggerheads with the Federal Party, which claims the government has been too generous to Ukrainian refugees and unilaterally banned Ukrainian grain imports earlier this year in an attempt to appease agricultural voters.
Preliminary data shows that turnout in the parliamentary election is expected to set a record since Poland returned to democracy. At 5 p.m., official turnout was nearly 8 percentage points higher than the previous election in 2019. Long queues formed outside polling stations in Warsaw and other big cities early on Sunday, and more than 600,000 Poles also registered to vote from abroad, nearly twice the number of voters nationwide. Number from four years ago.
At a polling station inside a school in Warsaw’s Ochota district, young voters said they wanted Poland to play a more constructive role in shaping EU politics and become part of a society more in line with modern European values.
Daniel, 37, who works for a US food company, said he voted for Tusk’s Civic Platform but his wife chose a “tactical vote” for the smaller left-wing party to help ensure it passed into parliament Required voting threshold. “I think a lot of people voted tactically today to make sure we get rid of PiS, which is really the top priority,” he said.
“We now have two worldviews in Poland, one pro-European and the other anti-European, but for me the really unacceptable part is what has happened to our justice system in the past few years. Today may be our last Chance says stop and get back to normal.”
Michał, a 33-year-old construction entrepreneur, equated the prospect of a third consecutive Law and Justice government with greater isolation on the international stage. “When you look at our geopolitical position, Poland cannot afford to be kicked out of the EU. If we stay in the same government, that’s where we’re headed.”
Still, analysts warned that Poland’s divisive and toxic politics meant exit polls may be less reliable than previous elections.
A similar election in Slovakia two weeks ago was expected to put liberal opposition leaders in the lead, but the final result put populist Robert Fico and his Smer party in the lead. “We could still be facing a situation like Slovakia,” Marcin Duma, head of pollster Ibris, said ahead of Sunday’s vote.
PiS officials also warned that pollsters may not accurately register support for the party.
“We believe we have a silent majority,” said Deputy Agriculture Minister Janusz Kowalski. “I know a lot of voters don’t want to publicly say they voted for law and justice.”
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