Earlier this week, headlines were all about “MAGA-aligned Karol Nawrocki” having won Poland’s presidential elections. One that has never been so close, with only 1.8 percentage points separating the two candidates. That translates to about 370,000 votes.
So, now, apparently, the country was ‘set on a more nationalist course’ and the Tusk-government will have an ‘extremely difficult’ time to ‘press his pro-European agenda’.
Analyses already point at the country’s usual East-West, city versus rural divide – factors that have played a role in every election of Poland’s modern history and are proofs of a more-or-less constant division that follows the former border of the German Empire.
But there is yet another factor: that is the vote of younger populations, who all tend to vote to the right.
The phenomenon is not unique to Poland.
Young people, especially young men feel left out and alone amidst a mixture of economic, social and political crises. In Germany, the Alternativa für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) is the second strongest party among voters under 25 – a segment that, historically, was more inclined to vote left (think the surge of the Greens during the last decades).
President Trump might have made it clear that he preferred to see Karol Nawrocki, ‘a winner’ as Poland’s president, but it was Nawrocki’s policies (e.g. promising to prioritize Poles for social services and health care, as opposed to migrants or Ukrainian refuges) that spoke to Polish voters.
Experts also pointed out the consistency of Nawrocki’s campaign messages, compared to Trzawkowski’s constant ‘rebranding’ and changing ideas, as the liberal Warsaw mayor tried to ‘please everyone’.
It wasn’t MAGA that won Poland, it was Polish voters who decided to pursue a different track.
People who will continue to vote for parties that hear and see them and listen to their voice. Not just on migration or economy, or the EU’s almost dead Green Deal, but also secular trends or LGBTQI+ issues – things that have repeatedly prompted voters to ‘turn right’. As an expert pointed out, ‘it’s a clear message: people still care about sovereignty, tradition, and strong leadership. Even younger voters are not buying into the idea of a ‘new progressive Poland’’.
The governing coalition in the Netherlands collapsed because the centre left didn’t want to hear the voices of 2.5 million people. Voters that not only propelled Geert Wilders’ PVV into parliament but made it into the largest group in the 150-member house.
Their main concern was migration, thus the PVV promised the ‘strictest asylum policy ever’ – policies that are ‘definitely not in the government’s plan’s’, according to Wilders. The PVV’s 10-point plan to extensively slash migration and rejecting asylum seekers met opposition from the other three members of the coalition, prompting Wilders to withdraw his party. ‘No signature for our asylum plans. No changes to the [coalition] agreement. PVV is leaving the coalition’, he posted on X.
For now, Wilders hopes to mobilize voters to gain even more support, saying ‘let’s go back to the voter’.
Maybe other parties will also take the hint eventually.
