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 36.16% of the vote.

However, the percentage difference between the two parties narrowed as the votes were counted and eventually amounted to just 0.9 percentage points from 4.3 indicated by exit polls.

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 as Confederation, the far-right political alliance made up primarily of nationalists and libertarians, received 12.08% 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 6.91% and 6.3% respectively.

The turnout was 40.65%.

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. This would give 21 MEPs to the Civic Coalition, 20 to Law and Justice, 6 to Confederation, 3 to the Third Way, and 3 to The Left.