Local elections given thumbs up by over half of Poles

When broken down into voting preferences, 88 percent of supporters of the ruling Civic Platform, 86 percent of Democratic Left Alliance supporters, 65 percent of junior coalition Polish Peasants Party supporters believe that there was no foul play in November’s elections.

However, only 45 percent of opposition Law and Justice supporters believe that the elections were reliable.

Around one fifth – 22 percent – throw the local election result into question, with half of those respondents believing that various errors were made which hampered the ballot.

Around one in three respondents (35 percent) think that not only errors were made, but that the elections were falsified.

The poll comes after problems relating to the first round of local and regional elections held in Poland on 16 November.

Although Law and Justice won the most votes (26.85 percent), the party garnered 4 percent less than an exit poll had indicated.

The ruling Civic Platform party managed to garner 26.36 percent of the vote, slightly less than the 27.3 percent given in the exit poll. Meanwhile, junior coalition partner the Polish Peasants Party won a surprise 23.68 percent, higher than the 17 percent forecast by the exit poll.

The Democratic Left Alliance took 8.78 percent, similar to the exit poll. Some 17.93 percent of the votes were declared invalid, five percent more than in the previous local elections. In the 2010 general elections 4.5 percent were dismissed as invalid.

CBOS undertook the poll between 4-11 December on a representative selection of 936 adult Poles. (jb)

Source: PAP