The Polish parliamentary election of 2015: a free and fair election that results in unfair political consequences

Abstract:

The Polish 2015 parliamentary election resulted in victory for a single party, Law and Justice. For other recent contributions in the Elections in context series, see for example André and Depauw (2015), Aylott and Bolin (2015), Arter (2015), Faas (2015), Haugsgjerd Allern and Karlsen (2014), and Markowski (2008) on Poland.

For the first time in the history of democratic Poland, the victor was able to create a government without having to negotiate with coalition partners. This was due not so much to significant switches in the preferences of voters, but rather the result of a very high number of wasted votes (more than 16% of active voters) due to thresholds for parties (5%) and party coalitions (8%). As a consequence, Gallagher’s disproportionality index surged to 11% (see Table 2). In three of the seven previous parliamentary elections, the victorious party attracted a higher percentage of active voters than that achieved by PiS in 2015 (37.6%), but was unable to form a single-party government (Markowski Cześnik and Kotnarowski 2015: 19–23).

The senior coalition partner in the 2011–2015 Civic Platform (PO) government lost a significant share of the vote, but if the newly established party Nowoczesna (Modern) is considered to be a direct heir of the liberal policy platform proposed by the early (i.e. 2001) PO, then the centre-liberal camp together obtained 32% of the vote. It should be borne in mind as well that the 2015 PiS party list also contained candidates from two other parties, Polska Razem (PR) and Solidarna Polska (SP), and was in point of fact a three-party coalition. Two additional phenomena are worth mentioning: the absence of parties of the left in the new parliament, and the poor result of the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), the only Polish political party that has survived under the same name and leadership since 1989. The poor result of the agrarian PSL in the countryside, among peasants and farmers has undoubtedly made a significant contribution to PiS’s strong showing.

ESO: Background information: Polish parliamentary election, 2015 http://www.europeansources.info/record/polish-parliamentary-election-2015/

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