POLAND’S ELECTION on October 15th may have been its most important since the fall of communism. Rule-of-law advocates called it a last chance to stop the country’s right-wing populist government from taking over the country’s judiciary, installing apparatchiks throughout its state institutions and destroying Poland’s standing in the EU. But until a few weeks ago, observers were concerned that Poles had become so disenchanted by a vicious election campaign that they would not show up to vote.

They need not have worried. As of 5pm, the turnout was 57.5%, far above the 46% registered at the same time in the vote in 2019. Many Poles told pollsters that none of the parties appealed to them, but they seem to have held their noses and picked the one they found least distasteful. “I open my wardrobe and feel like I don’t have anything to wear, but that doesn’t mean I go out naked,” said Karolina, a 26-year-old voting in Milanowek, outside Warsaw.

The results will not become clear until the votes are counted on October 16th (at the earliest), but exit polls suggested that the opposition had done extremely well. The main national exit poll by Ipsos found that the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has held power since 2015, had got only 36.8% of the vote, which would be well down from 43.6% in 2019. The main opposition party, the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), was not far behind at 31.6%. Another centrist outfit, Third Way, took 13% in the poll, well above expectations. Lewica (The Left), an alliance of leftists and social democrats, got 8.6%. The polls indicated that the hard-right Confederation party might have as little as 6.2%, well below its level of support over the summer and at the edge of the 5% minimum to make it into parliament.

Those polls were cause for celebration at KO’s post-election rally. “Poland won, democracy won. We removed them from power,” declared Donald Tusk (pictured), the former prime minister and ex-president of the European Council, who leads the party. The campaign was a grudge match between Mr Tusk, who is 66, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, PiS’s leader, who is 74. The two men have battled each other in Polish politics for decades. Though PiS’s Mateusz Morawiecki serves as prime minister, Mr Kaczynski remains the party’s unchallenged leader. PiS spent the campaign attacking Mr Tusk’s patriotism, harping on his part-German ancestry and hinting that he would plot with Russia.

PiS seemed to have suspected even before the election that this campaign was not working. At the party’s dilapidated headquarters in central Warsaw, the post-election rally, usually brimming with party hacks and journalists, was scaled back. As the exit polls were announced, Mr Kaczynski acknowledged that, despite coming first, his party might not be able to form a coalition: in effect, a concession of defeat. In its eight years in power, PiS has packed the country’s courts, turned its state media into propaganda organs and inserted cronies into the management of state-owned companies. The EU has withheld €35bn ($37bn) in post-covid recovery aid until PiS rolls back its attempts to take over the country’s judiciary. Should he prove able to form a government, Mr Tusk will try to undo PiS’s efforts to turn the country into a copy of Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Another government led by Mr Morawiecki would try to complete them.

Since it got the most votes, PiS will get the first chance to form a government. But whether it has any chance at doing so will depend on the final count of seats in parliament. Because Poland’s electoral system is based on multi-member constituencies, the number of seats won in parliament does not correspond exactly to the share of the vote. If KO, Third Way and Lewica collectively manage to win a majority in the Sejm, the lower house, PiS will have no chance unless they can somehow encourage defections; the three parties have already said they would govern together.

If the opposition falls short (though the exit polls do not predict this), things will be more complicated. Confederation’s leaders have made conflicting statements about whether it would be willing to form a coalition with PiS, or to support it from outside the government. While both parties are right-wing on social issues, Confederation holds libertarian economic beliefs and lambasts PiS for its over-generous social spending.

The election has not been a model of freedom or fairness. A pre-election report by the ODIHR, an international watchdog, noted widespread concerns about institutional bias. Poland’s state media have been absurdly one-sided. The state-owned oil company, Orlen, kept petrol prices low before the election. PiS promised to hand out money for firefighting and other services in districts that generate high turnout, but only in the smallest ones, where its voters are concentrated.

Simultaneously with the election, the government conducted referendums on questions that are seen as anti-opposition propaganda, implying for example that it favours illegal immigration. Rule-of-law advocates worry that the state body that reviews election disputes is dominated by PiS appointees.

A government led by Mr Tusk’s KO would face difficulties, however. It could face vetoes from Andrzej Duda, the president, who comes from PiS (though the post is technically non-partisan). Mr Kaczynski warned ominously that he was not giving up yet: “Regardless of whether we are in power, or in the opposition…we will not let Poland be betrayed.”

For the moment, the opposition’s spirits are high. In Milanowek, a town of about 16,000 that tends to split its vote between PiS and the opposition, most voters leaving the polls said (in low, conspiratorial voices) that they had voted for “change”. It is the last chance, said Maryna and Jacek, a middle-aged couple: “Everything is in their [PiS’s] hands already: the judiciary, the army, the police.” Unwinding those networks of control will be a tough job. And the bitter divisions in Polish politics are as deep as history. One PiS voter, more than 90 years old, said he had voted to “save Poland” from Russia and Germany, whose invasions he had survived during the second world war. Even if Mr Tusk and the opposition win, many Poles will remain convinced they are serving foreign interests. ■