Women And Young Voters Behind Polish Opposition Victory

Warsaw, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Oct, 2023) The electoral success of Poland's liberal opposition led by 66-year-old former EU president Donald Tusk was largely thanks to votes from people less than half his age.

Sunday's elections saw the highest turnout in Poland's post-Communist era, mainly due to unprecedented mobilisation among sometimes reticent voters -- young people and women.

Nearly 69 percent of eligible young people aged 29 or less voted, a 12 percentage point increase from the levels seen at previous elections four years ago.

Almost two thirds of them voted for the pro-EU opposition parties with only 14 percent choosing the ruling PiS -- and it was enough to make a difference despite Poland's demographic imbalance.

"There are around five million voters in the 18-29 age bracket compared to 10 million of those aged 60 or older," 22-year-old activist Wiktoria Jedroszkowiak told AFP.

"I've often heard that it is not worth addressing young people, because they won't influence the election results and they don't vote anyway."

Her nonprofit, Inicjatywa Wschod (Sunrise Initiative), had tried to prove such ideas wrong by encouraging young people to vote.

It launched a viral campaign with a slogan saying "we will not be quiet anymore", addressed primarily to women.

The campaign, along with many similar initiatives, was successful: almost 74 percent of women voted.

In a country with a near-total abortion ban introduced three years ago, women's rights movements have already fought hard battles -- but this time they needed to reach further.

"It turned out that young people cared not only about legal abortion... but also about the housing crisis or taxes," Jedroszkowiak said.

Lowering tax rates was one of the key issues on the agenda of Confederation -- a libertarian and ultranationalist party that hoped to score double-digit support, but ultimately ended up with just seven percent of votes.

According to analysts, women's votes may have played a part because of a dawning realisation of the effect that lower taxes would have on creaking public services.

"They were raised under Law and Justice and saw the public funds being squandered. We had to go out there and tell them things can be different," Jedroszkowiak said.

"You have to talk to them, for example about public transport".

Justyna Kajta, a sociologist at SWPS University in Warsaw, said many respondents declared themselves undecided in the polls were young women.

"When these young women actually went to vote, the balance was tipped in favour of other parties and against Confederation," Kajta said.

Despite the opposition success, Jedroszkowiak said she regretted there would only be three under-30 lawmakers in the new Polish parliament.

One of them is 24-year-old Adam Gomola, an elected member of parliament for the Third Way, a centrist party that is likely to enter the future government with pro-EU Civic Coalition and Left.

"When I launched my campaign, one of the local newspapers wrote I was 'a Facebook candidate' -- but I was never ashamed of that," Gomola told AFP.

The candidate stayed in touch with voters by going live on social media and letting followers behind the scenes of the campaign.

"I don't have a single doubt that it was young people that determined the outcome of the election... I received congratulations mostly from my peers," Gomola said.

As a lawmaker, Gomola said he wanted to focus on expanding the network of public transport -- especially in rural Poland -- and to insist on higher public investment in housing.

"The cost of living is particularly dire to young people who are entering adulthood and have to face enormous costs," Gomola said.

Jedroszkowiak said young people now believe the elections will make a real difference.

"Now this change has to be delivered on," she said.