After Nawrocki and his party PiS claimed victory at Poland’s President Elections last Sunday, Poland’s Civic Platform, the party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk must now reflect on its failure, and its future.
Unlike in Romania, there was no miracle for pro-European voters, Rafał Trzaskowski narrowly lost the elections against Karol Nawrocki, with barely a 1 per cent margin.
In many ways, this was a remake of the 2020 Presidential elections, which saw Trzaskowski opposing Andzrej Duda. In both elections, the Civic Platform candidate lost in a neck-to-neck race.
The famous quote: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is perhaps the best summary of Trzaskowski’s two campaigns.
In both cases, he focused on support from mid-sized and large cities, leading to a major divide between rural and urban results. In this year’s edition, Trzaskowski’s opponent Nawrocki scored over 60 per cent in the countryside.
He rarely visited these rural regions, especially in Eastern Poland, despite the numbers showing he needed to reduce his opponent’s lead.
As a result, PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) retained its countryside stronghold, winning 71 per cent in the region of Podkarpacie.
It should also be stressed that this was not only a failure of strategy, but the candidate choice of Trzaskowski may be looked back on poorly.
While he resonated well with urban residents, particularly those in Warsaw, having been the mayor of the capital for five years, there were better options.
Polish PM Donald Tusk supported Trzaskowski as the option to run against Nawrocki, which can be argued was a naive choice. Under Tusk and Trzaskowski, the Civic Platform has gradually lost swathes of support as it has focused on major cities, most of which are West of Warsaw. Many villagers and those in the East do not feel represented by Tusk’s government, which arrived in power in 2023.
A candidate like Radosław Sikorski, who serves as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, would have been better suited to a campaign in the countryside. He is not as left-leaning as Trzaskowski, which may be a compromise the Civic Platform needs to make if they want to claim a larger majority in the more conservative rural regions.
The Civic Platform needs to act, and fast. While they lead the government, their coalition is about to collapse. Most of the parties they have collaborated with represent a more radical left on Poland’s political landscape, which has not resonated well with the non-city dwelling public.
Tusk’s government has been inefficient, subject to the veto power of PiS president Andrzej Duda, who can stop several laws from being passed unless the government holds a ⅗ majority.
While it has become clear that the PiS/Civic Platform rivalry will not stop anytime soon, Tusk’s party needs to rethink its priorities to attract more parties to form coalition with, and more strikingly, it needs more voters. It has struggled to find the balance between pragmatism and its leftist ideology, resulting in criticism from both sides.
On one hand, the promises concerning abortion and left-leaning ideas have often come slower than expected, leading coalition partners to accuse Civic Platform of inefficiency and betraying its values. On the other hand, it has gone “too left” for central voters, leading them to shift to other parties instead.
Tusk won the hearts of young voters in 2023, promising liberal reforms which include LGBTQ+ rights and the legalization of abortion. Since then, support has dropped as he could not deliver most of his promises. If his target is a younger audience, questions should be raised about the Civic Platform’s lack of social media campaigning.
This can be achieved with younger party members, who have a better understanding of how to efficiently communicate their messages to a younger audience. One of the reasons why presidential candidate Sławomir Mentzen rose to third position rapidly in the first round had been his social media presence, especially on TikTok.
The Civic Platform also needs to realize what the demands of their voters are. While it’s true that the youth cares about LGBTQ+ rights, most voters do not have it as their first priority.
For the majority, worries concerning immigration and the rising cost of housing are more important issues.
Trzaskowski’s campaign was naive in many ways and failed to address issues raised by the public. It is not enough to blame PiS for what they have done in the past eight years when they governed.
Nawrocki was excellent at delivering a key message. Aware that most worry about the influence of Brussels on domestic policies, Trzaskowski and his party needed to reassure Poles this would not happen.
Half of Nawrocki’s campaign focused on promising “national sovereignty”, aware that Poles are afraid of “selling their country to Brussels bureaucrats”.
This is among the top reasons why Poles trust Tusk less and less, in the belief he will submit Poland to Brussels. To survive his party must shift the narrative, and show that Poland’s impressive economic development has been in great part thanks to EU-provided funds would have been a more viable and efficient strategy to implement.
The defeat might have been a narrow one, but the loss was not a complete suprise. The Civic Platform could not address the needs of the voters, and it paid the price.
Now, Tusk’s government will face another President using his veto to block any progressive proposal, leading to further voter frustration.
It was a lost opportunity, but there is time to still act. Europe and Ukraine will pay for the Civic Platform’s errors, which need to urgently self-reflect instead of blaming the right of populism.
As was the case in other Eastern European countries, the inaction from the left-leaning party has led to increased support of right-wing parties, which will lead to the political block between PiS and the Civic Platform for the next five years at minimum.
There has never been a time to bring younger leaders in the party, and adapt to the new demands.
Featured image via Dziurek / Shutterstock.
