Poles Are Voting in What Could Be Europe’s Biggest Election This Year

Support for Ukraine has emerged as core campaign issue, with upstart party driving the debate to the right

By Thomas Grove and Karolina Jeznach

Updated Oct. 15, 2023 12:07 am ET  Wall Street Journal

WARSAW—Poles are set to head to the voting booths Sunday in what is likely to be Europe’s most important election this year—one in which a smaller upstart party has pulled the debate to the right by questioning how much longer Poland can throw its full support behind its neighbor Ukraine.

Confederation, or Konfederacja in Polish, has no realistic prospect of gaining power, nor does it say it wants to participate in a new government. But its willingness to break the taboo of questioning support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion last year has shifted the playing field, driving the ruling Law and Justice Party to compete for votes by taking a notably more hostile approach to providing indefinite backing for its neighbor.

The far-right Confederation appears to have tapped into the public mood by saying it is time to stop support for the refugees who fled here after Russia rolled into Ukraine in February last year. More than one million Ukrainians came to Poland, where they can compete for jobs, use the Polish healthcare system and claim other benefits.

 “There is a growing resentment within the Polish society toward Ukrainians. Poles are starting to feel undervalued, bitter and as if there is not enough appreciation—only expectations,” said Emilia Kujawska, 52, an IT service manager who lives in the suburbs of Warsaw and said she would be voting for Confederation.

Though Poland’s support for Ukrainians is still among the highest in Europe, polls show it is waning. One survey in August indicated that around a quarter of Poles want to cut off funding, up from low single digits last year, and the shift in sentiment has made itself felt in the election campaign, eating into support for the right-leaning Law and Justice. Polls show the incumbent winning 37% of the vote, making it the most likely to form a government, though less than the 44% it secured in 2019. The opposition alliance, led by the former prime minister and former president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, is forecast to win 30%.

The first exit polls are expected on Sunday evening, when the likely formation of the next government is likely to become clear.

The surprise surge in support for Confederation, some of whose members previously have expressed antisemitic views, could change the political dynamic in Poland in what could be a critical moment in the West’s support for Ukraine.

“They introduced into the core of the debate the nationalist message anti-Ukrainian sentiment,” said Wojciech Przybylski, a political analyst at Visegrad Insight, a Warsaw-based think tank focused on central Europe. “That message might be hard to get rid of.”

Confederation’s messaging found a space in the mainstream in the weeks before the election when the ruling Law and Justice, or PiS as it is known in Polish, began to make waves with Ukraine, first implying Kyiv wasn’t sufficiently grateful for Warsaw’s help and then imposing a unilateral ban on Ukrainian grain, in violation of a European Union decision. It argued the imports’ rock-bottom prices were hurting the country’s farmers.

A few days later, Polish President Andrzej Duda compared Ukraine to a drowning person who could pull under anyone who tries to help, while the prime minister said it wouldn’t share any of its new military hardware with Kyiv.

The rising tensions have given cause for concern for the U.S., which has been coordinating its military aid for Ukraine through Poland. And while the friction eventually subsided, rising anti-Ukrainian sentiment could cause further headaches for Washington, which is hoping for a stable partner to see through its Ukraine policy even as its own support for Kyiv comes under growing scrutiny.

“If a government with PiS comes through, Washington would accept that, but it wants first and foremost a consistent and responsible partner,” said Przybylski. Analysts say that while no party alone has enough support to form a government, PiS could form a government by picking off lawmakers aligned with Confederation, which itself is a disparate group with various parties and agendas.

PiS has largely campaigned on its pledge to keep Poland safe and stable as the war drags on next door, raising the specter of further Russian aggression while boosting inflation and migration.

At this election’s sole debate, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the audience that only PiS could keep Poland secure and repeated accusations that Tusk, who leads the opposition alliance Civic Platform, would be willing to give away half of Poland to appease Russia if it invaded.

Tusk has dismissed the accusations as untrue, but the ruling party has tried to double down on its security credentials at any opportunity. When Russian paramilitary fighters from Wagner temporarily rebased in Belarus, PiS sent some 4,000 troops to the border. It now plans to build the largest military force in Europe with new reforms and fresh procurement from the U.S. and South Korea.

“I definitely feel safer with PiS in power than with the Civic Platform. My father is a retired soldier, a former sapper who took part in several U.N. missions, and he told me that during Civic Platform times, they were actively disarming the country, getting rid of many units,” said Lukasz Szewczuk, 46, a Warsaw resident and longtime PiS supporter.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski heads the ruling Law and Justice party, which has pushed Poland further from the rest of the EU in recent years. PHOTO: JAAP ARRIENS/ZUMA PRESS

There are signs, however, that PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s nationalist direction is bleeding into culture-war issues that have pushed Poland further from the rest of the EU. In the eight years under PiS rule, the country has passed anti-LGBT laws and sharply restricted access to abortion, both of which were formally criticized by Brussels.

The government has also clashed with Brussels in recent years over judicial reforms passed by Warsaw in 2019 that removed a number of judges. The European Court of Justice deemed the moves illegal and is withholding funds until they are reversed. PiS said they were needed to cleanse the legal system of communist sympathizers.

Supporters of Tusk and his opposition alliance, meanwhile, have led major rallies with hundreds of thousands of participants in liberal-leaning Warsaw, united by a shared distrust for both Kaczynski and PiS policies, which they say have pushed Poland further from Europe while restricting individual liberties.

“PiS is destroying Poland, on so many levels. This is like going back to the Polish People’s Republic when everything was centralized. That is true now too—with one man in charge of everything: Mr. Kaczynski,” said Justyna Grabowska, 52, a graphic designer from Warsaw.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com