For the Kaczynskis, the EP election in June is the next important stop.

The main opposition force, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, received 33.7 percent of the votes in the first round of the Polish local elections, while the Civic Coalition (KO), which leads the government coalition, won 31.9 percent of the votes, according to those leaving the polling stations. from a survey (exit poll) on Sunday, late in the evening.

According to the results of the exit poll prepared by the IPSOS polling company, the Civil Coalition (KO) won in 10 of the 16 Voivodeships in Poland, and the Law and Justice (PiS) won in 6.

When forming local government coalitions, the KO will presumably enter into an alliance with other government coalition partners, so it will be able to control more than 10 voivodeships.

In the previous local elections in 2018, a broad coalition of liberal and left-wing parties took control of the assemblies in a total of nine voivodships, while PiS governed in seven voivodeships.

The participation rate on Sunday was 51.5 percent - less than in the 2018 local elections (54.9 percent). The turnout in last October's parliamentary elections was 74.38 percent, the highest since 1989.

The exit poll was also prepared for the mayoral elections in six large cities.

Based on this, Rafal Trzaskowski, the former mayor of Warsaw, the KO candidate, won already in the first round. The independent candidate supported by KO won in both Gdansk and Katowice. In three big cities (Krakow, Wroclaw, Rzeszów) a second round must be held on April 21, where none of the candidates won more than 50 percent of the votes.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk called Trzaskowski's election result (59.8 percent) the news of the day at the press conference organized by the KO election staff after the announcement of the exit poll results. The KO-led coalition repeated the victory achieved in the October parliamentary elections on Sunday, Tusk declared.

PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczynski also spoke of victory. He stated: the result achieved by his party shows that if the parliamentary elections were held now, PiS "could possibly come to power".

However, the parliamentary elections will be held in more than three years, so now we must first win the European Parliament elections in June and then the presidential elections next year, Kaczynski added.

The national election commission promised the final results of the first round by Wednesday at the latest.

MTI

Cover photo: Jaroslaw Kaczynski, president of the Law and Justice Party (PiS), addresses his supporters, in the background is Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (b3)
Source: MTI/EPA/PAP/Pawel Supernak