Polls show Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a neck-and-neck race, with the outcome hinging on the voting patterns in swing states, where people of Polish descent form a significant part of the electorate.
Dick Morris, an architect of former President Bill Clinton’s election campaign in the 1990s, once said that there is no such a thing as a Polish electorate, referring to the fact that Polish-Americans do not vote as a bloc but in the same way as the general electorate does.
In most previous election campaigns neither the Democrats nor the Republicans made intensive efforts to win the votes of the Polish diaspora.
However, experts say this year’s election is different.
Poles hold key to swing states
In key battlegrounds, voters with Polish roots could play a decisive role as they make up 5% of the electorate in Pennsylvania and about 8% in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Donald Pienkos, a political scientist from the University of Wisconsin, told Polish state news agency PAP: “All three states are ‘in the game,’ so appealing for their votes makes a lot of sense in a close election.”
He added that the vast majority of around 8 million Americans of Polish descent are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants from Poland, and although a significant number of them do not speak Polish, Polish traditions are cultivated in many families.
Different messages
Although both parties are trying to win the votes of the Polish diaspora, they are addressing it with different messages.
The Democrats’ message focuses on the war in Ukraine and the importance of NATO, highlighting Trump’s aversion to the alliance and his alleged sympathies for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Republicans’ strategy is much less organized, but Trump is directly involved in it, referring to Polish symbols and history in his message.
As part of the campaigning, the former president has held meetings with Polish activists in New York, telephone talks with the Polish American Congress on its 80th anniversary, and addressed Americans of Polish descent through social media on numerous occasions.
Trump also gave an interview to Poland’s private Republika television station, popular among the right-wing section of the Polish community, in which he claimed that no American president has done more for Poles than he has and that Democrats and Harris “don’t like Poles.”
A study conducted in 2022 by Piast, a U.S. institute for Polish and Polish-American affairs, showed that the majority of voters of Polish origin supported the Democrats in the last two elections: Hillary Clinton (50% compared to 38% of votes cast for Trump) and Joe Biden (56%-37%).
The study also revealed that the ideological sympathies of the Polish community align closely with those of all Americans, with 40% identifying as liberals, 39% as conservatives, and 21% as moderates.
The survey found no major differences between the preferences of voters born in Poland and those from the Polish diaspora born in the United States.
