Palikot Movement taking support from the Left?
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
27.09.2011 14:13
The Palikot Movement, a liberal offshoot of the ruling Civic Platform party has broken through the five percent threshold required to gain seats in parliament in the 9 October general election in Poland, according to a new poll.
The poll taken by the Estymator polling group for Newsweek Polska finds that the Palikot Movement, centred around ex-Civic Platform political maverick Janusz Palikot is on 8.2 percent, behind Law and Justice (PiS) on 29 percent and Civic Platform itself on 37.4 percent.
The current junior coalition member, the Polish Peasant’s Party (PSL) is on 7.4 percent.
If the poll transferred into the percentage of votes actually cast on 9 October it would mean that the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD, at present the third largest political party in the lower house of parliament (Sejm), would not gain any seats in the next parliamentary term.
“Palikot and SLD run in the same [socially liberal] niche,” Prof. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, a sociologist and rector at Collegium Civitas in Warsaw told Polish Radio.
The poll was conducted from a nationwide, representative sample of 1,610 adult Poles, conducted between 22 and 26 September. (pg)