ISSN: 2560-1601 Vol. 31, No. 1 (PL) July 2020 Poland political briefing: Presidential elections - results and consequences Joanna Ciesielska-Klikowska 1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11. +36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: CHen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01 Presidential elections - results and consequences On July 12, 2020, the second round of presidential elections ended in Poland. After months of unusually difficult campaign, the winner was the incumbent President Andrzej Duda from the ruling party Law and Justice. However, his victory over the opposition candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski from Civic Platform is small. What was the campaign like and what consequences would Duda's second term of office bring for Poland? Preparations for elections The presidential election in Poland was set for June 28, 2020. This final date was ordered however very late - as a result of the situation related to the COVID-19 epidemic, there was no voting in the elections planned for May 10, 2020 (the date of which was set by the Marshal of SeJm in February). Two days before the voting scheduled for that date the National Electoral Commission issued a resolution in which it argued that: “the inability to vote for candidates due to the pandemic is tantamount to a situation of no candidates”. This questionable interpretation of the situation made it possible to re-announce the election date by the SeJm Marshal. And at the same time, gave the right to take part in these new elections by the candidates who were registered in the elections ordered on May 10, but without a second duty of collecting the 100,000 signatures of support required by the Electoral Code. According to art. 296 of the Act of 2011 of the Electoral Code, a candidate for President of the Republic of Poland may be a person proposed by at least 100,000 citizens who have the right to vote in the parliamentary elections. Such notification is made by the electoral committee formally supporting him/her, which is established after the written consent of the person concerned. The election committee may be created by a minimum of 15 people. After collecting at least 1,000 signatures of supporting citizens, the election committee may be notified to the National Electoral Commission, and start collecting the signatures of support for the presidential candidate. Finally, by June 10, 2020, eleven presidential candidates were registered. Nine of them have already submitted their candidates in the spring (in the elections planned for May 10), one turned out to be a completely new candidate, while one was replaced by the Civic Platform party by another candidate from this camp. 1 Voting In fact, the most interesting battle took place between the incumbent President AndrzeJ Duda from the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), and this completely new candidate – Rafał Trzaskowski, the vice-president of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO) and the current mayor of the capital city of Warsaw, who replaced the earlier candidate from the PO, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska. It was these two candidates who received the greatest support in the first voting round, which took place on June 28. Duda then obtained 43.5% of votes, and Trzaskowski 30.5% of votes. Szymon Hołownia, a non-party candidate, came third, with the support of 13.9%. Already during the first round of elections, the turnout was, considering Polish conditions, high - it amounted to 64.5%. This indicated that the stakes of these elections were huge, and the public was aware of importance of the decisions. It was possible to choose to maintain the current political course, which took place over the last 5 years, when President Duda has been ruling in a team with a government from the same right-wing political environment. Or to choose to change and gain some control over the legislative process by electing a head of state coming from the opposite political option - the centre-liberal Civic Platform. After the first round of elections, there was a two-week, very intense campaign of two candidates before the second round. Both political parties were mobilized - especially Law and Justice and their coalition partners from the government of the United Right (Jarosław Gowin's Agreement and Zbigniew Ziobro's United Poland); and the Civic Platform. But citizens themselves mobilized as well, encouraging other citizens to actively participate in the elections (and to vote for any candidate) and to show that the fate of the motherland was not indifferent for them. This resulted in an increase in voter turnout - on July 12, 68.2% of those eligible to vote (in total 20,640.000 citizens out of 30,260.000) went to polling stations. The voting ended with the victory of incumbent President Duda, who was elected for the second term, receiving 51.03% of the vote in the second round in which he defeated Trzaskowski (48,97%). The slight difference between the candidates (approx. 420,000 votes) indicates that the fight was both fierce as well as very even. However, the current ruling camp achieved the final victory. It is interesting to take a closer look at the election results, considering several important factors that define voters: 2 • Trzaskowski won in most age groups, with the greatest advantage over his competitor among the youngest voters (18-29 years of age), but he also kept the advantage among people of 30-49 years old. The elderly, over 50, were much more inclined towards Duda; • taking into account the voters' place of residence, Duda won in the countryside with a clear advantage. However, in cities up to 50,000 inhabitants his competitor has taken the lead. Although in cities with a size from 50,000 up to 200,000 of residents, support for both candidates was almost the same, yet the larger the city, the greater the advantage of Trzaskowski - the advantage in cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants was even greater than the advantage of Duda in the countryside; • in terms of division into voivodships (regions), Poland has been divided almost in half along the Vistula River. Rafał Trzaskowski was supported by the following voivodeships: Zachodniopomorskie, Pomorskie, Warmińsko-Mazurskie, Kujawsko- Pomorskie, Mazowieckie, Wielkopolskie, Lubuskie, Dolnośląskie, Opolskie and Śląskie. AndrzeJ Duda had the greatest support in the provinces: Podlaskie, Łódzkie, Lubelskie, Świętokrzyskie, Małopolskie and Podkarpackie; • in terms of the level of education, the division of support looks even more interesting. AndrzeJ Duda definitely gained the support of people with primary and basic vocational education (mainly pensioners, factory workers, farmers and the unemployed). Poles with secondary education slightly more supported the incumbent President. On the other hand, university graduates strongly supported Trzaskowski. 3 These results caused a huge wave of discussion. It turned out that AndrzeJ Duda was elected President by - generalizing the outcomes - older people, with lower education, living in agricultural areas of central and eastern Poland. Many years ago this part of Poland was called in a critical way by political scientists the so-called “Poland B”, in opposition to the better educated, richer and younger “Poland A” living in the western part of the country. Consequences of the elections The result of these elections is extremely important for the future of Poland and will bring a number of consequences, but it also leads to a few conclusions. Firstly, the results of the elections show that Poland remains somewhat cracked. To put it simply, the trench between “two Poles” is Just as wide as in previous years (although due to the increase in turnout, the difference between AndrzeJ Duda and the Civic Platform candidate is smaller, numerically similar to the voting from 2015), but it seems to be getting deeper. Secondly, the level of bilateral aggression, negative campaigns, radicalisms of both sides, open agitation for AndrzeJ Duda by the main state-owned media (which at the same time discredited Trzaskowski) - seem to be increasingly accepted by the maJority of voters in each camp. This may bring devastating consequences for Poles as a national community in the years to come. Thirdly, the slight advantage of AndrzeJ Duda with the increase in turnout shows that in the event of a match with another candidate in the second round, he would have huge problems with victory. Perhaps he would have lost if the non-party candidate Hołownia, who had practically no negative electorate, and united voters from the right, left and the centre, got to the second round. At the same time, however, Trzaskowski's candidacy allowed the President's staff to mobilize voters from outside the United Right's electorate, who would stay at home in a less confrontational clash or even (in a minority) would vote for his competitor. Fourthly, the biggest failure of the ruling camp seems to be allowing the “pendulum mechanism” to be activated among the youngest voters. It was they who, having experienced their “conservative rebellion” in 2015, significantly contributed to the success of the United Right at that time. Today, both at the level of political choices and sympathies, as well as more and more expressive cultural and civilization trends, one can notice a progressive drift of the young generation to the left. 4 So the two most important challenges facing AndrzeJ Duda's second term today will be: i) to attempt to rebuild the minimum standards of political culture, which would at least enable communication between polarized camps on strategic matters, and ii) to win in the United Right camp a centre capable of stopping the liberalization of the young generation. However, it will be difficult to do this, because young people are rediscovering the charms of liberal Europe again and want to feel part of it.