A hung parliament for Poland? - Warsaw Business Journal - Online Portal - wbj.pl

A hung parliament for Poland? - Warsaw Business Journal - Online Portal - wbj.pl

27th October 2010
Bookmark and Share

The latest SMG/KRC voter poll reveals that if parliamentary elections were held today, the current junior coalition partner, the Polish Peoples' Party (PSL), would not cross the five percent threshold needed to get into parliament.

The senior coalition partner Civic Platform (PO) would receive 39 percent support, the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) would be backed by 27 percent of the electorate and the leftist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) would get 13 percent of the vote.

Only four percent of respondents said they would vote for PSL, while Jaunusz Palikot's nascent political party would receive one percent of the vote.

If these results transpired in reality after parliamentary elections next year, forming a government would prove extremely difficult as none of the parties would have an outright majority and a coalition between two of the three parties could only ever be extremely fragile.

PO is an economically liberal and socially conservative party, while PiS is even more socially conservative but very left-leaning when it comes to economic policies. SLD meanwhile is the most left-of-the-center socially as well as being economically leftist.

PO and PiS have been at “war” since the 2005 parliamentary elections which PiS won, so a coalition between the two of them seems unthinkable, while a scenario which involves any of the post-Solidarity parties (PO and PiS) forming a coalition with the post-communist SLD would be a very tough sell for either of their respective electorates.