Polish Opposition Risks Election Loss Over Divisions, Poll Shows
(Bloomberg) -- Poland’s bickering opposition parties are unlikely to unseat the ruling Law & Justice coalition unless they decide to run together in parliamentary elections expected in October, an opinion poll showed.
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The survey is a wake-up call for the opposition, which has for months struggled to put aside its differences and mount an effective challenge against the government.
“We’re running out of time,” Civic Platform lawmaker Jan Grabiec told Radio Zet on Monday. Arranging a deal among the opposition parties is “a question of days or weeks. Any attempts to find a common ground later won’t look credible to our voters.”
The four main parties — the Civic Platform, the Left, Poland 2050 and the Polish Peasants Party — would fall short of a majority in the lower house of parliament under scenarios that assume them running separately or in smaller alliances.
Only in one case — when the opposition runs jointly — will it be able to win 50.9% of the vote and have a sufficient number of seats to form a government after the election, according to the March 1-13 poll of 4,000 people from the Kantar Public pollster published by the Gazeta Wyborcza.
The Law & Justice-led alliance has gained ground in recent polls, helped by the outrage over a documentary about the late Pope John Paul II and its focus on defense in the face of the war in Ukraine.
The opposition has so far failed to capitalize on Poland’s cost-of-living crisis and the government’s inability to end a spat with the European Union over democratic backsliding and the rule of law that has frozen billions of euros in aid funds.
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