The victory was so predictable that the winner seemed hardly happy. "There are four more years of hard work ahead of us," Jaroslaw Kaczynski said. "We can do more, but that requires us to think carefully about what worked well and what was bad." For the second time in a row, his party "Law and Justice" (PiS) won the parliamentary election, the most reliable exit polls saw the PiS in almost 44 percent of the vote, the strongest opposition party, the Civic Coalition, landed at around 27 percent. Then comes the left with 12, the farmer's party with just under 10 and the right-wing Konfederacja with about 6 percent.
The program of the PiS was chosen wisely
So about pollsters had foreseen the outcome. Noticeable is the record high turnout of 61 percent, which is the second highest value since the turn of 1989. In many countries, a high turnout tends to hurt right-wing populist parties. But PiS is different, PiS voters are not protest voters. Although PiS does as if, but in truth she has never been an anti-establishment party. PiS voters are voting for a program, a programmatic mix that Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his strategists have skilfully concocted.
On the one hand, he makes the typical nationalist promises of protection: protection from migrants, protection from gays, from Brussels elites and their allies in the Polish metropolises. On the other hand, PiS has promised social benefits: child benefits, additional payments for the farmers, a 13th pension, higher minimum wages. Ostentatally, the party turns away from the neo-liberal zeitgeist, which has accompanied the transformation in almost all European countries. Read more about why the PiS is so popular in Poland
And that depends. It's not just about fighting real poverty. The vast majority of Poles have become richer since the fall of the Wall. But many are much less than the winners in the big cities. PiS breaks with the chill of neoliberalism, which brought the less successful, the less mobile, the slightly slower: Make more of your work! If you can not do that, it's your own fault!
But PiS says: The hard times are over, now the earnings of the boom in the wallets have to end up from all poles. Almost 43 percent of voters forget that the party has de-institutionalized the Constitutional Court and isolated the country in the EU. A rule of law procedure is still pending in Brussels.
Social question dominates the election
That it is the social question that has decided the election is also shown by the success of the left. The alliance of ex-communists, modern leftists and the openly gay politician Robert Biedron landed in third place with about twelve percent. Four years ago, the Left had not even made it to parliament.
The liberal coalition had little to oppose to the campaign machine PiS: no clear program, no charismatic leader, no catchy slogans. There, Jaroslaw Kaczynski has almost become more worried about the competition from the right: the konfederacja, a confused troop of anti-abortionists, gay haters and ultra-nationalists, has been poaching the PiS 'electorate and chasing away young, male voters in rural areas.