The elections to the European Parliament were the third vote (after parliamentary and local elections) to take place in Poland in less than a year.
These elections, however, are the first vote in which the Civic Coalition (KO, center-right, liberal) came ahead of the former ruling party, currently the main opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS, right-to-center-right, conservative), which came in second with 33.9% of the vote.
Five parties or alliances of political parties in total managed to cross the 5% electoral threshold, and the biggest surprise may be who took third place.
Confederation, the far-right political alliance made up primarily of nationalists and libertarians, received 12.9% of votes.
This means it came ahead of two other political alliances forming the current government: the centrist Third Way (made up of the Polish People’s Party and Poland 2050) and The Left, which won 8.2% and 6.6% respectively.
The turnout was 39.7%.
In these elections, Poland is allocated 53 out of 720 seats in the European Parliament. The Polish seats will be distributed between the parties and alliances according to the D’Hondt method. According to the results of the exit polls, this would give 21 MEPs to the Civic Coalition, 19 to Law and Justice, 6 to Confederation, 4 to the Third Way, and 3 to The Left.
European Elections
About 357 million people across 27 EU member states were eligible to vote. The Dutch were first to vote on Thursday, with a handful of other countries holding their voting on Friday and Saturday. For most of the Europeans, however, the election day was on Sunday.
The exit polls, estimates, projections, and results from all the countries can be viewed below as they come in.
