Elections: who stayed home this time?

Donald Tusk's government is, in all likelihood, facing a series of shake-ups. Admittedly, the prime minister announced a major reconstruction "after the elections," but at the moment the cards, figuratively speaking, have fallen out of his hand. Looking at the results of individual candidates, it turns out that two left-wing politicians - Adrian Zandberg and Magdalena Biejat - combined to score practically twice as well as the Speaker of the Sejm. There is also rather little doubt as to why, or rather to whom, they owe it - to Rafał Trzaskowski and his campaign strategists, who decided, rather unexpectedly, to open up from a center-left politician, clearly associated with progressivism, to a more conservative electorate. Hence, for example, Trzaskowski's support for optional health education, the attempt to hide the rainbow flag during the debate in Końskie, or the baffling idea of taking away the 800 plus benefit from non-working Ukrainians (or rather, Ukrainian women). Trzaskowski created space for the left-wing party candidates to spread their wings, all the more so because of his absurdly incomprehensible involvement in the topic of lowering the health contribution for entrepreneurs. Nota bene, Szymon Holownia's result puts a dot over the i in the discussion of whether this is the direction Poles really want.

There would not have been a total of 10 percent support for the Left (along with 1 percent for Joanna Senyszyn), had it not been for the vacant field abandoned by Rafal Trzaskowski, who gave the leftist or left-leaning electorate a walkover to candidates who practically didn't count at the start of the campaign. Who, it is necessary to do them justice, were able to seize the opportunity, and in fact - were just being themselves. It is hard to imagine that the voters of the New Left or the Together party in the second round decided to stay at home, with the prospect of the presidency ahead of them, opening the way to a Law and Justice-Confederation coalition with a strong wing of Grzegorz Braun, who, after all, was not removed from Slawomir Mentzen's party for fear precisely of a split and the departure of (too) many activists, including recognizable politicians. The same goes for Szymon Holownia's voters. The Democrats have two weeks to heal the wounds inflicted on each other before the first round. However, this is not enough to think about victory.

Although turnout in the first round was not low, more than 66 percent, the second highest in the history of presidential elections in the 21st century, it was 9 percentage points lower than that of the parliamentary elections. Without an answer to the question of who stayed home this time, the equation will not be solved. The election results are a clue - young women stayed at home. That's why Slawomir Mentzen received more than a third of the votes in the 18-29 age group, and more than a quarter in the next age group. In turn, support by gender shows that support for Mentzen among women was twice as low as among men (10 vs. 20 percent).