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Left Wing Non-Voters in Poland

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Left Wing Non-Voters in Poland REPORT Left Wing Non-Voters in Poland Czesław Kulesza Katarzyna Piotrowska Gavin Rae Fundacja „NAPRZÓD” ul. Mickiewicza 37/58 01-625 Warszawa tel. +48 720 785 188 e-mail: [email protected] www.fundacja_naprzod.pl www.facebook.com/fundacjanaprzod/ Front cover photo: wikipedia/Julo This report was prepared with the support of transform! european network for alternative thinking and political dialogue. transform! europe is partially financed through a subsidy from the European Parliament. Czesław Kulesza Katarzyna Piotrowska Gavin Rae Left Wing Non-Voters in Poland REPORT Warsaw 2018 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . 5 i . THE IMPORTANCE OF NON-VOTING FOR THE LEFT . 5 iii . NON-VOTING IN POLISH ELECTIONS – REGIONAL AND EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE. .6 iv . VOTER STABILITY IN POLAND. .7 . v . WHO ARE NON-VOTERS IN POLAND . .8 . vi . THE LEFT ELECTORATE . 10 . vii . NON-VOTERS AND THE LEFT . 12 viii . OPINIONS OF LEFT-WING NON-VOTERS . 12 . ix . STraTEgiES OF POliSH LEFT-wiNG parTIES TOwardS NON-VOTERS . 20. x . CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS . 21. INTRODUCTION in Poland. We provide some analysis of the charac- teristics of the left-wing electorate before present- For the first time since 1918, the Polish left has ing the results and analysis of an original question- no representation in the national parliament. The naire carried out on a sample of left-wing non-voters country is now governed by a conservative nation- in the country, in order to ascertain the opinions of alist party, which has managed to gain the support this group. This is accompanied with information from sections of society that are amongst the most obtained from interviews with a number of left- excluded and dissatisfied by the reality of capital- wing non-voters. We then provide information on ism in Poland1). However, regularly around half of the strategies of left-wing parties towards gaining the electorate do not vote in parliamentary elec- the votes of left-wing non-voters. Finally we list our tions. The country has one of the lowest political conclusions and recommendations. participation rates in Europe, with an extremely low percentage of the population belonging to political i . THE IMPORTANCE OF NON- parties. In order for the left to rebuild itself, it must VOTING FOR THE LEFT examine how it can win the support of those that do not vote in elections and are not committed support- Left-wing parties are facing intense difficulties ers of any of the right-wing parties. and challenges throughout Europe. The decline in This report examines the issue of non-voting in support for many European left-wing parties has Poland and at how the left may attempt to gain the been due to a section of its core electorate either votes of left-wing non-voters in the country. Firstly voting for alternative parties (sometimes from the we examine the issue of non-voting in general and nationalist right) or abstaining altogether from the why it is that people do not vote in elections. Then political process. we analyse non-voting in Poland in comparison to Opinions as to why people do not vote can gener- other elections Central and Eastern European (CEE) ally be divided into two main perspectives. countries inside the European Union. The next stage The first point of view is that people do not vote of our study is to investigate the social composition because of structural changes that have occurred in of non-voters in Poland. We then turn to the issue of society and politics. It is postulated that there has the left and look at the correlation between the de- been a move towards a post-materialist society and cline in support for left-wing parties and non-voting economy, with values of individualism and autono- 1) ’PiS and PO Voters in the Last Twelve Years’ (‘Elektoraty PO i PiS w ostatnich dwunastu latach’), CBOS, Nr 130/2017 6 my surpassing material values such as scarcity and downturns occurred in the eastern countries of the security2). On the left, this was encapsulated in the region, that belonged to the former Soviet Union. theory of the Third Way and the move of major social However, the economies in the west of the region democratic parties (such as the British Labour Party also went through a contraction on a scale unprec- and the German Social Democratic Party) towards edented in peacetime Europe. Poland has been con- the political centre during the 1990s3). Accordingly, it sidered to be one of the most successful economies is postulated that the left should adapt itself to these in CEE, however even its level of GDP fell by almost socio-economic changes, accept the dictates of a free- one-quarter between 1989 and 1991 and unemploy- market economy and express the post-materialist ment rose from 1% to 16% from 1989 to 19934). values of a supposedly expanding middle class. This It was in this context of economic and social de- first perspective has been brought into question by cline, that the democratic political systems in CEE the global economic crisis, growing social inequali- were formed from 1989. Table 1, displays the differ- ties and the era of austerity politics. Also, the sharp ent rounds of parliamentary elections that have tak- decline in support for many left-wing parties in Eu- en place since the fall of Communism, in the CEE rope (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Holland, France, Greece, countries that belong to the European Union5). Ireland) has been accompanied by these parties in- If we take the region as a whole, we can observe troducing neo-liberal policies whilst in government. that at the beginning of the transition turnouts in par- An alternative viewpoint, assumes that non- liamentary elections were generally high. Therefore, voting primarily occurs due to growing social in- in the first round of parliamentary elections in CEE, equalities and exclusion. This creates an expanding turnout exceeded 86% and in the second round 73%. section of society that feels dissatisfied with the po- In countries such as the Czech Republic, Croatia and litical system; believes that they are not represented Latvia the turnouts were particularly high in these by any political party; nor that that voting will bring elections, far exceeding those in Western Europe. Al- about any positive change in their lives or address though it may have been expected that these turnouts society’s inequalities. When people believe that they would decline after the initial euphoria of the political are not properly represented in this system then transition, the scale of this drop has been alarming. they will often decide not to vote or participate in Therefore, by the fifth round of parliamentary elec- politics. This tends to be the poorest and most ex- tions, the turnout in CEE averaged just 58% and in cluded in society, which in turn increases these so- the seventh round it stood at less than 55%. Although cial disparities. As large parts of the left have moved there has been a steady decline in the turnout at elec- towards the ‘political centre’, so increasing sections tions in Western Europe, this has not been on the same of the electorate have lost their traditional represent- scale as those in CEE. For example, in the most recent ative in politics and have therefore looked towards parliamentary elections, the turnout in Germany was supporting parties from the nationalist right or ab- 75%, Italy, 80%, France 61% and the UK 63%. staining from voting altogether. The turnout in parliamentary elections in Po- land has been consistently low, averaging just 48% ii . NON-VOTING IN POLISH ELECTIONS - (the lowest in the whole of CEE) and exceeding 50% REGIONAL AND EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE just three times. At the beginning of the transition turnout in Poland was exceptionally low, standing At the beginning of the 1990s all of the former at only 42.8%, the lowest out of all the ‘post-Com- communist countries underwent large econom- munist’ countries under study6). The trend in Po- ic contractions and a huge increase in unemploy- land has not followed most other CEE countries, as ment and labour deactivation. The largest economic it has actually risen slightly over the past two and 2) Ronald Inglehart, R, The Silent Revolution. Princeton (Princeton, 1977) 3) Anthony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder The Third Way (Berlin, 1999); Anthony Giddens, The Third Way. The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge, 1998) 4) Rae, G. (2012) Poland’s Return to Capitalism. From the Socialist Bloc to the European Union. London. IB Tauris 5) We have tried to group these rounds of elections as close as possible to those in Poland, although of course some countries have had more or less elections over this timescale. 6) The first parliamentary election included here is that held in 1991. In 1989 there was a semi-free election to parliament, in which candidates from the Solidarity opposition movement won the vast majority of votes in those seats it was allowed to contest. 7 a half decades. However, in the last parliamentary shows how turnouts in presidential elections fell elections turnout was only just above 50% and has sharply from 2005, and that this reached a nadir in averaged below 49% during this whole period. Si- 2015, when less than half of the electorate partici- multaneously, we have seen other CEE countries pated in the presidential elections. converge with Poland’s very low rate of participa- Therefore the ‘post-Communist’ countries in the tion in parliamentary elections, with Romania now EU have an increasing democratic deficit, with Po- even having a significantly lower turnout than Po- land having one of the lowest average turnouts in land during the last parliamentary elections.
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