Poland

Polish Senate Elections of 2011

pawelbartoszek@gmail.com

The Poles went to the polls on October the 9th 2011 and elected a new Parliament. There were new rules in play for the Senate elections, the one hundred (100) senators where for the first time elected in a Firs Past the Post single member constituencies. This is the electoral map.

Polish Senate Elections 2011
An Electoral Map of the Polish Senate Elections, October 2011.

As you can see, the ruling right-wing liberal Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) took the bulk of the senate seats, in fact they took 63 of them. They were, as before, strong in Western parts of the country as well as the bigger cities. The traditionalist christian conservative party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) fared better in the East as well as in the rural areas, grabbing a total of 31 seats. The co-ruling agrarian Polish People’s Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe) got two seats, with the remaining four seats going to independent candidates. The final table thus looks as follows:

  • PO – 63
  • PIS – 31
  • PSL – 2
  • OTHER 4
This is of course a good victory for the ruling coalition, which should be able two count on at least 65 of its own members, as well as at least 3 of the 4 “independents”, which were elected with at least informal support of PO (Cimoszewicz, Borowski and Kutz did not receive any competition from PO in the districts where they ran).
A big question remains, with regards to the whole sense of the Senate idea. The electoral reform where supposed to give local politicians, even independents a stronger chance at a seat in the Polish Senate. Looking at the map one can see that local persona had little effect on the outcome, the voters almost uniformly, voted for their national parties, and not for particular candidates.

  The map outline above is taken from the webpage of the Polish Electoral Committee. (www.pkw.gov.pl)