SINCE coming to power in 2007, Poland’s centrist Civic Platform (PO) party has notched up an unbroken string of victories in national elections. Voters unsettled by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party’s erratic performance in power from 2005 to 2007 apparently deemed it unelectable. That equation changed on May 24th, with the upset win of Andrzej Duda, the 43-year-old PiS candidate, in Poland’s presidential contest. His defeat of the incumbent Bronislaw Komorowski by 51.5% to 48.5% points to widespread fatigue with PO. With a general election due this autumn, the question is whether Mr Duda won because of his own strengths as a candidate—or whether Polish voters are shifting from the centre to the right.
The heavily favoured Mr Komorowski, who ran a complacent campaign, was shocked after finishing second in the first round on May 10th. He made hasty efforts to recover before the run-off, scheduling a nationwide referendum on a proposal to switch the electoral system from party lists to single-member districts—a demand made by Paweł Kukiz, a former rock star who won 21% of the...
from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1G2WyMR
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