The Confederacy in the 2023 parliamentary elections gained 7.2% of support. This is an improvement of the consequence compared to 2019 (6.7%) with a evidence turnout of 73.5%. The Confederacy gained net about 300 000 voters.
The last nationwide election involving a Confederate candidate is the 1st circular of presidential elections. Krzysztof Bosak obtained about 1 317 1000 votes in them. According to the Ipsos poll, 51.5% of the voters of Krzysztof Bosak voted for Andrzej Duda in the second round, and 47.8% for Rafał Trzaskowski.
On this basis, 2 main profiles of Confederate voters can be categorized. 1 is ‘traditional’, where conservatism, patriotism, Catholic religion or social radicalism are the primary values (all characteristics can be shared). In turn, the second part is simply a liberal electorate, or rather, "free market", which is primarily guided by the demands of economical liberalisation.
According to a Latepoll Ipsos poll, about 21% of Confederate voters from 2019 voted for the 3rd Road or Civic Coalition in 2023. That's about 300,000 voters. About 11% of voters voted for Law and Justice and Poland is 1 is about 150 1000 voters. The Polish committee itself is 1 obtained in the 2023 parliamentary elections about 330 1000 votes.
These figures show a crucial (disclosed) part of the Confederate's electoral possible and confirm its heterogeneity.
Look at the urban structure of the Confederate voters:
Compared to 2019, the Confederate gained from 423,000 votes in the countryside to 641,000 (an increase of % from 6.41 to 8.02%), and in the city the increase was tiny – with a percent decrease (797 1000 to 854,000).
If we presume that agrarian voters are more afraid with the issue of the moral worldview (family, tradition, patriotism, opposition to abortion and LGBT), then in this electoral section the Confederation gained almost nothing in the liberal electorate.
Let's besides look at the map of the Confederacy's support for voivodships:
The eastern, more "rural-small-town" area turned out to be friendly to the Confederate. If we divided Poland along the Vistula line, the Confederate on the western side would get 5 tickets – 2x Silesia, Gdynia and Wrocław, where it weighed the size of the territory and Opole. Bastions of support for the Confederation are districts of Białystok, Lublin, Rzeszów, Kraków, Kielce, Siedlce and alleged Warsaw bagels.
Let's now decision on to the voters the Confederacy has obtained. About 15% of the current Confederate electorate voted for the PiS earlier. about 15% voted for the first time – years of age and those who did not vote in 2019 despite having an active electoral right. Only half of Confederate voters in 2023 are Confederate voters from 2019. That gives about 700,000 voters who decided to vote for individual else. We have already said that around 300,000 are "liberal" voters. By adding 2% of the 2019 Confederate voters, who voted for the Unpartisan Localities and the Left, the lost electorate of the Confederate splits almost half in half into liberal electorate and conventional electorate.
So much for voter numbers and flows. Let us now look at how the surveyed support for the Confederate (as a mention point of the 3rd Road) has evolved since the end of June 2023.
I've reported on her respective events with the Confederacy. The summit of support falls on the second week of July, where the main media subject was the grain scandal.
Due to the suspension of Janusz Korwin-Mikke's membership and the removal of him from the Confederate Leaders' Council and suspicions of the negative impact of his statements in support of the election, I have brought the 2 loudest events with his participation. The first was to participate in the "Patriarchat" conference in mid-September 2023 and to address the YouTube affair a week before the election deadline of 15/10/2023, after which Korwin-Mikke was asked not to make further statements during the election campaign. As we can see, the support for the Confederacy before the first event was about 9.5% and the second was 8.7%. If we compare this to the summit of support 14/07/2023 – 14%, we see that Korwin cannot be liable for most of this loss.
I deliberately omit controversial statements about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. These were just before the grain affair and seemingly did not hinder the Confederacy from gaining support. The same goes for Gregory Braun. The statements of both Members could paradoxically satisfy the resulting opposition niche against the main pro-Ukrainian message.
We besides request to consider another factors. First, attendance. According to various public life commentators specified as Marcin Palade, attendance was higher by about 10pp. This means that with the expected attendance, the Confederacy consequence could improve to a score of about 8-8.5%. Thus, if only to place Janusz Korwin-Mikke in charge, it would be 0.8 to 1.5pp. This is crucial and could cost respective tickets due to the d’Hondt method.
The fact is that much of the Confederate's support had already been lost before (typical) actions by Janusz Korwin-Mikke. Let me mention 1 event – electoral debate (RMF FM, publication youtube 20/09/2023) Sławomir Mentzen with Ryszard Petru had 1.2 million views and was assessed as a failure of the president of the Confederation. It besides included a curiosity proposition that the request to liquidate the PIT was a joke. If in the section of young liberal voters fermented, this event could be considered a turning point. However, it is only speculation, due to the fact that there were no jumps in support. They were besides not recorded after statements by Janusz Korwin-Mikke.
Notice that the illustration of support for the Confederacy is fluid. The support wasn't jumping, it was linear. The trend is even model linear. The confederate with the mob supported for 3 years to support the order of 10%. erstwhile the organization reached 14% and peaked at 3rd place, it naturally besides attracted more attention from journalists, debaters and opponents who disagreed with the Confederate – it is besides possible that their unconvincing media appearances of Confederate members, whether in the media or at electoral meetings, motivated them to change their opinion. Anyway, if the Confederacy has attracted fresh voters, it has attracted critics as well. And the voter can change his mind, and that's what happens. en masse It's okay. The Confederacy did not lose its support “suddenly”, it gradually lost it.
Let us so discuss another possible factors that have made the Confederacy's election consequence lower than could be expected. We discussed the first, or turnout. The turnout importantly mobilised the "central" electorate, resulting in higher support for the 3rd Way and civilian Coalition. This is an apparent explanation, due to the fact that higher attendance helps different parties to a different degree only if we establish a different level of electorate mobilisation.
According to CBOS research, the Confederate electorate is the least motivated electorate on Wednesday 5 major political parties. The "hard" electorate that ensures participation in the election (for 80% or more) is only 51%. It can so be said that only half of the Confederate voters are electorates of any mobilization.
The first argument is, therefore, that attendance did not so much harm to the Confederation as the Confederation could not sufficiently mobilise its constituents.
The next origin that could have affected the election consequence is the way in which the election run was conducted. The president of the Confederation, Sławomir Mentzen, focused his efforts on visiting large cities (the alleged “Beer with Mentzen”), large conventions and social media (mainly tictok, twitter, facebook). The second are besides mainly utilized by people from large urban centres. 1 can so hazard saying that the urban focus of the run was the urban electorate and more "liberal" – but here I reserve that the conservative electorate is besides present in large cities.
It should be analysed how much of the expenditure was allocated to this part of the campaign, and how much to the ‘terrestrial’ campaigns in smaller cities (less than 50,000). There is simply a celebrated saying that “choices are won in the Horses”, though they would be more appropriate in the “thousands of Horses”. However, there are examples of Members who conducted an effective field campaign, specified as Roman Fritz of the Crown, which was conducted with their own summary. For example, in territory 40 (Koszalin) the only activity of the full Confederation in the last six months was an election gathering with Grzegorz Braun, on Wednesday 12/10/2023. Additionally, he had a typical of the fresh Hope on number one. There are no meetings in Darłów, Sianów, Szczecinek or even Kołobrzeg. The list was besides anonymous, while known names like Siarkowska, Sosnierz, Wilk or Zajączkowska were not singles in another districts. Mr Sosnier was very active in Siedlce, but there were 3 large names (along with Sosnier and Siarkowska, the recently elected MP Krzysztof Mulawa). I besides remind you that Janusz Korwin-Mikke erstwhile organized “Summer with Korwin” and that the majority of this run was due to summertime – and September was an unexpected warm month. So why wasn't it utilized and given, for example, to Mr. Sosnirz a 1 in territory 40?
Could a more active field run have produced tangible results? To illustrate this numerically, let us list the districts where little than 6 1000 votes were missing from the mandate: Legnica (2,2 thousand), Bydgoszcz (3,2 thousand), Lubuskie (2,3 thousand), Piotrków Trybunalski (0.5 thousand), Sieradz (0.5 thousand), “warzanek” of Kraków (2,6 thousand), Tarnów (3,2 thousand), Płock (4,2 thousand), Radom (3,2 thousand), Gdansk (4,5 thousand), Olsztyn (4,5 thousand), Kalisz (1,000), Konin (5,6 thousand), Szczecin (4,5 thousand).
Only 1 territory mentioned here has more than 5,000 votes – Konin – mentioned as “promising” due to the large presence of the candidate from “one”, Mrs Anna Bryłka in the media, specified as electoral debates and conventions. This is an example of how the media presence (central) does not translate into an election consequence “at home”.
In total, the aforementioned districts were 50,000 votes that could be obtained by conducting a more active field campaign. Especially interesting case of Lubuszki, Kalisz and Konin, what would happen if the Confederate drove its supporters from Poznań by bus (result 5.6%) to neighboring districts? This would not be a novelty, as 1 of Korwin-Mikke's parties erstwhile failed to registry a nationwide electoral committee and the mobility of the "intervertebrate" was 1 of the points of the campaign. Has anyone in the organization considered this possibility?
The 3rd origin to consider is the electorate of the organization "Poland is One". 330 000 votes and 1.5% despite no "central" media support is the consequence to be reckoned with. If half of the PJJ electorate had voted for the Confederate, it would have had 12 more tickets. If you number the PJJ electorate – it would be 16 more tickets. announcement that PJJ's message addressed the electorate "conservative", "Catholic" and "antisystemic" – i.e. akin to the Confederate, but more specifically: the National Movement and the Crown.
The failure of about 350 000 voters in the "liberal" section can be lamented, but why completely ignore akin losses, if not larger losses on the "conservative (etc)" side of the segment. Especially for the 330 1000 "Poland Is One" electorate, we will add 150 1000 more PiS voters who were Confederate voters in 2019, then we have almost half a million possible voters!
The Confederacy sits on 2 stools. If the “liberal” section does not like, for example, Grzegorz Braun's statements, it is crucial to ask whether the “conservative” section likes the statements of Przemysław Wipler about the restoration of the abortion compromise or the liquidation of the “gay tax” by Sławomir Mentzen?
Don't treat it like a individual thing. The intent of this analysis was to prove that these were not individual individual failures of the candidates and leaders of the Confederation were a problem, although their negative impact should not be excluded. I want to show that the problems lie elsewhere in the "structure" of the electoral process and how the Confederation "systemically" deals with it.
In summary, the causes of the inadequacy to expectations of the election result, in addition to controversial statements by Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Grzegorz Braun, Dobromir Sosnier (a question of whether dogs can be eaten) or Sławomir Mentzen are:
1) Turnout
2. Electoral run aimed at the incorrect town fair, while possible is in smaller centres
3) Focus on the presence in classical and social media
4) the failure of part of the electorate possible for Poland There is 1 and the Law of Justice, and on the another hand the 3rd Way and civilian Coalition
Point 4 should be developed as a summary. In line with the timetable for the second circular of presidential elections, it should be assumed that the Confederation has 2 clearly defined targets: The "liberal" electorate may be attracted to substantive preparation, but this will be difficult, as for example, the 3rd Way took over any of the demands attractive to specified a profile of voters. In the next word of office of the Sejm, it will be crucial to score the 3rd Way (and the Civic Coalition) for failing to fulfil these electoral promises and to present solid, clearly spelled legislative solutions, which may not have been achieved in this word of the Sejm.
In turn, the "conservative" electorate may be drawn to the radicality and clarity of transmission specified as conservative values, opposition to abortion, partnerships, addressing issues specified as parental alienation or interior safety (criticism of migration policy).
It should be taken into account that the electorate of the first group may be lost by besides explicit demands on world-view issues, especially if its aspirations are not met by the precision of solutions. In turn, if the focus is on this group and controversial worldview themes are silenced in the name of average message, the organization will lose its “edge” profile and expressiveness, crucial to the second, “conservative” group of voters.
Similarity in transmission to another parties results in fighting them for the same electorate. The Confederation must not so much search balance between these groups, but intensify efforts simultaneously in both segments.
As Marshal Józef Piłsudski erstwhile said, commenting on the geopolitical situation of Poland in the 1930s, “Poland sits on 2 stools and must decide from which it will first fall”, so the Confederate sits on a liberal and conservative stool and it may be essential to make a decision on which it will be uncomfortable. In the liberal segment, there is simply quite a few competition (KO, 3rd Road, Independent Local Governments) and efforts to gain it, specified as average transmission, de-radicalisation, “silence” of worldview themes or circumstantial MPs, can be simply idle. There is simply a much more hard "field of combat" if you do not want to devote yourself completely to the conservative profile of the worldview. And then a conventional voter will ask himself why not PJJ and why not even the PiS or the PSL?
The answer to the question of whether and how to sharpen the ideological profile or how to effort to balance on 2 stools leaves the leaders of the Confederate.
Kamil Kisiel
1) Data for PKW website
2) https://www.gasetaprrawna.pl/news/articles/1485929,on-who-in-second-tour-voted-elector-bosaka-howownia-i-poedonia-exit-poll-ipsos.html
3) Politico
4) for CBOS: https://www.cbos.pl/Spiritkom.POL/2023/K_073_23.PDF
5) For example, economist Tomasz Makiewicz.
