Young people can revitalize the Polish left – Aleks Szczerbiak

In Poland, left-wing parties have a lot of influence in the public debate, but over the years they have done badly in the elections. For much of the period following the 1989 revolution, the strongest progressive force was the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) – heir to the Communist Party – which ruled the country from 1993 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2005. But after being collapsed in the 2005 elections, and following a series of serious corruption scandals, the party went into crisis. In the 2015 elections he presented himself within the United Left coalition (Zl), which, however, took only 7.6 per cent of the votes, below the threshold established by the electoral law to enter parliament (for individual parties the threshold is 5 per cent). Thus, for the first time since 1989, left-wing parties have had no representation. Meanwhile, Law and Justice (Pis), the right-wing party that has ruled the country since 2015, has become the first political group to obtain an absolute majority in post-Communist Poland.

After the defeat, many commentators gave up on the SLD, calling it cynical and corrupt, with voters – nostalgic for communism and growing older – literally disappearing. In reality, the party still had deep social roots in those sectors of society linked to the previous regime, due to personal convictions or material interests. Among the voters were mainly those from families linked to the army and former security services. It was a relatively small segment, and in steady decline, but large enough for the SLD to maintain its hegemony on the Polish left.

This hegemony has been tested by the birth of Razem (Together), a party which – thanks to its dynamism and the clarity of the program – has gained support among the youngest and most progressive Poles. Razem’s militants criticized the SLD for siding in favor of liberal economic policies and for supporting an Atlanticist foreign policy when it was in power, and accused it of betraying leftist ideas. Razem took 3.6 percent in the 2015 election, too little to enter parliament but enough to prevent the United Left coalition from breaking through the 8 percent barrier. Razem failed to capitalize on his early promises and attract wider support than the educated urban “hipsters” who formed his core.

In February 2019, another alternative on the left was born: Wiosna (Spring), a social-liberal-oriented formation founded by Robert Biedroń, a veteran of the struggles in defense of sexual minorities who at the time was the most loved and charismatic politician of the Polish left. But after a promising start, the party struggled to create its own space, and in the 2019 European elections it obtained only 6.1 per cent of the votes, a result much lower than expected.

L’yet another disappointment
In the legislative elections of October 2019, the three parties joined forces and presented themselves united. The coalition, called Lewica (Left), won 12.6 percent of the vote (it was the third most voted formation) and returned parliamentary representation to the left after four years of absence. Many leftist commentators and activists hoped that this new parliamentary group would use its platform to shift political debate to the left, challenging the right and liberal centrists who have dominated Polish politics since 2005. The SLD also changed its name to Nowa Lewica (New Left), in anticipation of an official merger with Wiosna.

In fact, Lewica’s 2019 election result was broadly in line with the 11.2 per cent of votes obtained by Sld and Razem together in 2015 (albeit with a much lower turnout). Furthermore, the hope that those elections represented a turning point soon faded: in the presidential elections of June-July 2020, Biedroń, the candidate chosen by the coalition, finished sixth with just 2.2 percent of the votes. It did not give that feeling of “novelty” that instead transmitted Szymon Hołownia, a centrist-oriented TV presenter who was running as an independent, who finished third with 13.9 percent of the votes.

But Lewica received a new boost from the publication, in February 2021, of a survey that the number of Poles between 18 and 24 who consider themselves to be leftists nearly doubled, from 17 percent in 2018 to 30 percent in 2018. 2020. Never since the collapse of communism had so many people called themselves progressives. The survey also showed that for the first time in twenty years, more young people who consider themselves to be on the left are more than those on the right (27 per cent) or in the center (23 per cent). If the entire electorate is taken into account, only 20 per cent consider themselves to be left, against 37 per cent who say they are right.

These data came in the wake of the large demonstrations organized in October 2020, when the constitutional court declared abortion in the event of malformations of the fetus unconstitutional. Poland already had one of Europe’s most restrictive laws on the matter, and the court’s decision further limited the right to terminate a pregnancy, making it legal only in cases where the mother’s health is in danger or if the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape. Given that the majority of legal abortions performed in Poland in 2020 were the result of malformations of the fetus, that ruling amounted effectively to an almost total ban.

Protests in defense of abortion have been among the most popular since 1989 and have involved different sectors of Polish society, extending beyond the progressive urban centers, including the small or medium-sized cities that constitute the electoral bastion of the Pis. A November 2020 survey (actually based on a small sample) shows that 28 per cent of young Poles said they had participated in the demonstrations, compared with 8 per cent of all respondents. It is a fact that contrasts with the previous demonstrations organized by the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Kod), to protest against the anti-democratic policies of the Pis. Those demonstrations involved mostly middle-aged or elderly people. Many young Poles were undoubtedly drawn to the festive atmosphere of the protests, at a time when social interactions were severely limited by anti-covid-19 measures. But some commentators have argued that it was also a formative political experience for those who participated.

Against i boomer
In February 2021 Lewica tried to channel this political energy by organizing a meeting between young activists with the slogan “The future is now”. During the event, some proposals designed for younger voters were presented, including an amendment to the abortion law, reducing the influence of the Catholic Church in public life and greater economic support for young people. However, the apparent political mobilization of Poles (especially young people) during the protests in defense of the right to abortion does not seem to have gained support for Lewica, at least according to polls that estimate it to be around 9 percent, less than the votes collected at elections in 2019. The main beneficiary of the 2020 protests appears to be Polska 2050 (Poland 2050), the newly formed party from Hołownia, which currently enjoys an average support of 20 percent.

So what do young Poles mean when they say they identify with the left? In national politics, the terms “left” and “right” refer to attitudes towards moral and cultural issues rather than socio-economic policies. Polls suggest that Polish youth are becoming more progressive on issues such as abortion and recognition of same-sex relationships. The protests also appear to have accelerated a long-standing trend that sees young Poles more secular and less attached to the influential Catholic church. Given its opposition to all forms of abortion, the church was a major target of the protests. During the demonstrations anti-clerical and pro-abortion writings appeared on the walls of churches, and some demonstrators interrupted religious services. This breaking of cultural taboos of the past – targeting an institution that was, for many Poles, a fundamental pillar of the nation and civil society – is confirmed by the derogatory term with which the young protesters describe the approach to politics and sources. of moral authority of the older generations: dziaders (simile a boomer).

The problem for Lewica is that in Poland, voters who are less wealthy and in favor of redistributive and left-wing economic policies, which should be their natural basis of support, tend to be older and more conservative on social issues, and therefore tend to vote for parties like Pis. These parties are right on moral and cultural issues, but they are in favor of the welfare state and more state intervention in the economy. At the same time the kind of younger and more affluent social progressives, who in Western Europe would naturally lean towards left-wing parties, in Poland are often quite liberal in economics.

Young Poles are also a group of voters on which it is difficult to build a political strategy. Although their turnout increased in the last elections – also indicative of greater political polarization – they remain difficult to mobilize. They also tend to change their political affiliation very quickly. In previous elections they often voted for all kinds of protest parties born after 1989. The fact that many of them now associate the ruling party with the political establishment is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Pis took the votes of many young people in 2015 but lost them in the following years.

Furthermore, young Poles are not politically homogeneous and, according to polls, the shift to the left has been accompanied by an increase in identification with the right (and a move away from the “center”) in this same age group. It also reveals an important gender gap. Younger women, especially those who live in larger urban centers, have more progressive views and a great many identify with the left. Conversely, younger men, especially those living in smaller cities and rural areas, express more conservative views and tend to identify more with the (often radical) right.

Defining themselves as leftists, young Poles perhaps signal their broadest, albeit somewhat poorly defined, hostility towards the party in power. Beyond the difficulties of building an electoral strategy on the mobilization of young voters, the main problem of the Polish left is that it fails to create a specific and attractive proposal at a time when politics is polarized according to the attitude towards Pis. . As long as this remains the case, many potential left-wing voters – including young people who see themselves as left-leaning – will “lend” their support to all those parties that appear to have the best chance of defeating the one in power.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)