A late poll by the Ipsos studio shows that Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party won 36.6 % of the votes in Sunday’s Sejm elections, the Civic Coalition can expect 31 %, the Third Way 13.5 %, the Left Party 8.6 %, and the Confederation 6.4 %.

Late polls are exit poll results including 50 % of the official results from the electoral commissions. The exit poll was conducted before 900 randomly selected voting centres. The data was collected by interviewers.

The conversion of votes from the late poll into parliamentary seats shows that the democratic opposition parties (Civic Coalition, Third Way and Left) will have a majority (248 seats) in the new Sejm. The survey shows that Law and Justice can expect 198 seats, Civic Coalition 161, Third Way 57, Left 30 and Confederation 14. There are 460 MPs in the Polish Sejm.

According to the State Election Commission (PKW), the elections passed off peacefully. Since the start of voting, the PKW has recorded 373 violations, most of them related to the destruction of election documents.

At a press conference on Sunday after 10 pm, PKW chairman Judge Sylwester Marciniak reported that the turnout in the elections was very likely to be a record high. According to the poll, it was 72.9 %.

“First of all, I would like to thank the voters, because it can already be said that at the moment the turnout is probably the highest in the history of the Third Republic of Poland”, said Marciniak, adding that some voting centres ran out of ballots on Sunday, while others had so many voters that the commissions had to extend voting hours.

At the polling station in Jagodno, Wrocław, the last voter cast his ballot at around 3am on Monday morning. There were still several hundred people waiting to vote after 1am. Some stood in line for six hours.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński