And this question also had EU relevance seeing recent years’ political debates between the EU institutions and the PiS government over issues of rule of law. As a novelty in this election, the Civic Platform (PO) was joined by other minor parties in the alliance called Civic Coalition, while other parties followed suit by organising themselves in similar formations (Third Way and the Left).
The Sejm election held on 15 October 2023 brought several surprises. In the first place, an all-time-high turnout which seemingly benefitted the opposition powers, in particular Third Way and Civic Coalition. And while PiS managed to win the election as a separate party, its only imaginable prospective coalition partner, Confederation received way less votes than foreseen by public opinion polls. Looking at the final allocation of mandates, Civic Coalition, Third Way and the Left will have a comfortable majority in the Sejm with 248 seats ensured if they reach a coalition agreement in the next months. What happened at the polls? What is the most likely scenario now? What will president Andrzej Duda do next? If a new Tusk cabinet is formed, what will its relations with the Orbán cabinet be like in the future, and how will it affect the Visegrad Group? Researcher of the Centre for Political Science at MCC, Szabolcs Janik had the honour of discussing these and similar questions in the Centre’s latest Votes & Seats podcast episode with Tomasz Grosse, professor of the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw.
