The composition of the future Sejm is, in a sense, more important than the composition of the Senate, because the Sejm majority will decide on the appointment of the new government. The Sejm majority will also be able to reject Senate amendments to adopted laws. A greater majority is required only for a possible presidential veto—to override it in the Sejm, a three-fifths majority is necessary, meaning at least 276 deputies.
Voters who appear at their local polling stations on election day will receive two ballot papers, most likely in different colors—one for the Sejm elections and the other for the Senate elections. On each of them, they should cast their vote by marking an “X” next to the name of the candidate who has been put forward by the electoral committees. Voters—unless they refuse to participate in the referendum held at the same time as the elections—will also receive a third ballot paper containing four referendum questions.
Under the Constitution and the Electoral Code, elections to the Sejm are proportional, while elections to the Senate are based on a majority system. In practice, this means that the distribution of seats in the Sejm should be close to the distribution of voters’ support—medium-sized and small groups also have a chance of winning seats in the Sejm. Senate elections are held in single-member constituencies (JOWs)—each can have only one winner: the person who receives the most votes in a given constituency takes a seat in the Senate.
Elections to the Sejm
The distribution of seats in a proportional system is somewhat more complicated, because it is impossible to divide the 460 seats in the Sejm in a way that perfectly reflects the proportions of votes among the parties.
First, not all parties will be entitled to take seats in the Sejm. Poland has so-called electoral thresholds: an electoral committee representing a single party must obtain at least 5% of the vote nationwide, while a coalition committee—as Koalicja Obywatelska and Trzecia Droga have been registered—must obtain at least 8% nationwide. If they receive too few votes, they will not be entitled to any parliamentary seat, even if they perform better in some constituencies than nationwide. These are relatively high electoral thresholds, among the highest in Europe. Their effect was perhaps most visible in 2015, when the KORWiN committee came just below the threshold for parties, with 4.7% of the vote, while the United Left coalition committee came just below the coalition threshold, with 7.5%. As a result, the committees that crossed the threshold received more seats, and Prawo i Sprawiedliwość was able to govern without forming a coalition.
The electoral threshold does not apply to committees representing national minorities. In practice, in Poland this concerns exclusively the German Minority committee, which usually receives enough votes to fill one seat from the Opole region.
Second, parliamentary seats are distributed in constituencies. In each constituency, voters receive different ballot papers—the committees put forward a separate set of candidates in each constituency (the smallest committees sometimes fail to register lists in all constituencies, while the largest parties stand nationwide). Poland is divided into 41 Sejm constituencies, which vary in size. Some constituencies comprise entire voivodeships (Podlaskie, Opolskie, Świętokrzyskie and Lubuskie), while others are parts of voivodeships delineated along powiat boundaries. Each constituency has been assigned a number of seats—from 7 to 20—so that the total number of seats in all constituencies equals 460. Note: there is no separate constituency for Poles abroad—all votes cast outside the country (and in the most recent elections there were usually several hundred thousand of them) are added to the constituency covering Warsaw.
When the Electoral Code was adopted in 2011, the numbers of seats assigned to the constituencies were very close to a proportional division based on population. The exception was the Warsaw constituency, where only the capital’s population was taken into account, without people voting abroad. This original distribution has gradually become outdated due to migration and changes in population numbers in individual constituencies. The National Electoral Commission has already appealed to the Sejm several times—without success—to make a so-called demographic adjustment, meaning a modification of the distribution of seats among constituencies. This is important because in constituencies where the population has declined but there are too many seats, a single vote carries more weight than in constituencies where the population has increased (or—in the case of the capital—which receive many votes from abroad). This distorts electoral equality.
The size of a constituency is also important for another reason—small groups find it more difficult to win a seat in small constituencies, where there are few seats to distribute.
How exactly are seats divided among parties—or, more precisely, among electoral committees that have exceeded the statutory threshold of support? In Poland, this is done using the so-called d’Hondt method (Americans know it as the Jefferson method). The number of votes cast for each eligible electoral committee—that is, one that has exceeded the statutory threshold—is successively divided by 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. The largest numbers in the resulting set are then selected, in a quantity equal to the number of seats to be distributed in the constituency. The seats won are assigned to the individual electoral committees in this way.
It may happen—and has happened repeatedly in Poland—that a committee exceeds the statutory electoral threshold, 5% or 8%, but receives so few votes that it wins not a single seat in this procedure. We then say that it has failed to exceed the natural electoral threshold. Votes cast for that committee will not translate into any deputy in the given constituency, but they will not be “added” to any other committee either. The smaller the constituency, the higher the natural electoral threshold. It can be estimated that in Poland’s smallest, seven-seat constituency, a committee can be certain of winning at least one seat only after obtaining 12.5% of the vote (usually less is enough to win the “last” available seat).
The d’Hondt method does indeed favor larger groups and integration—this feature of the system is sometimes called progressive proportionality. Two committees running separately with the support of 10% of voters would win fewer seats than if they ran together and received the support of 20% of voters. However, the d’Hondt method does not imply anything like a separate “winner’s bonus,” understood as additional seats awarded simply for winning the electoral race. The winning party is indeed favored by the seat-allocation method—but in this way, every unusually large group is favored in proportion to its size. For the prospects of small groups, the relatively high statutory electoral thresholds, the division of the country into relatively small constituencies, and the resulting high natural thresholds matter considerably more than the d’Hondt method. In other words, our electoral system for the Sejm is not as proportional as its name would suggest—not necessarily because of the d’Hondt method itself, but because of its combination with the division of the country into relatively small constituencies.
Once the number of seats due to the electoral committees in individual constituencies is known, it is necessary to determine which specific candidates will receive them. Contrary to frequently repeated opinions, it is not the case that the next people from the “top” of the candidate list always become deputies, or that a seat must always go to the list’s leader. By voting for a candidate on the ballot paper, voters mark a specific person—and only the total number of those votes in the constituency determines who ultimately receives a parliamentary seat. If a committee is entitled to three seats, they go not to the first three people on the list, but to the three with the highest number of votes.
Of course, a candidate’s position on the list matters, as studies show that a higher position favors winning a seat. Candidates in the number-one positions almost always won a seat whenever their committee was entitled to one in a given constituency. Nevertheless, the farther down the lists, the more frequent the reshuffling of candidates. It should be noted that in the most recent elections, around 20–30% of parliamentary seats were allocated contrary to the order of candidates printed on the ballot papers.
Candidate lists in Poland are fairly long. Each committee may put forward twice as many people in Sejm elections as the number of seats available in the constituency. Thus, in the largest constituency, Warsaw, where 20 seats are distributed, one committee’s list may contain as many as 40 people. Committees usually put forward lists of the full permitted length, hoping that even little-known candidates can encourage some voters to support them.
Building candidate lists is a fairly complicated puzzle—in addition to the order of names, it is also important to maintain proportions among different factions (or parties within coalition committees), as well as to include local candidates whose name recognition can mobilize the electorate closest to them. This is usually referred to as “friends-and-neighbors” voting. Deputies usually have their own “territories,” smaller than the area of the entire constituency. Candidates from the same electoral committee also compete for voters’ support, sometimes fiercely—it happens that the key factor in electoral success is exclusivity, meaning the absence of competitors from the same list who come from the immediate area.
It is worth adding that gender quotas have been in force in Sejm elections since 2011—each list should contain at least 35% women and at least 35% men. Gender quotas increased the proportion of women among candidates, but parties usually place female candidates in less favorable positions than male candidates, explaining this by their lower name recognition or limited experience. Therefore, the introduction of quotas did not lead to immediate and spectacular changes in the proportion of women in the Sejm.
Elections to the Senate
In Senate elections, the seat-allocation procedure is less complicated. Poland is divided into 100 single-member constituencies with comparable populations (once again, the exception is Warsaw, where votes cast abroad all go to one constituency: Białołęka–Bielany–Śródmieście–Żoliborz). In each of the 100 Senate constituencies, one Senate seat is available, and it goes to the candidate with the best result—even the smallest lead over the other candidates is decisive. Each committee therefore nominates only one candidate in a JOW, rather than an entire list.
In a typical JOW, the winner takes all and the loser gets nothing, which is why Senate elections encourage integration even more than Sejm elections. It was precisely the majority electoral system that was the main reason for the creation in Poland of the so-called Senate Pact, because separate candidacies by each of the parties opposed to PiS would not have allowed them to achieve a relative majority in many constituencies. All this means that there are far fewer Senate candidates, and the ballot papers are much shorter. In many constituencies, they will probably list only two candidates.
Because the electorates of individual parties are not distributed evenly throughout the country, some Senate constituencies are called “safe” for PiS or the Senate Bloc, because one side has a clear majority of voters there. Other constituencies are called “front-line” constituencies because the advantage of one bloc is not clear and a small number of votes may decide the victory.
Single-member constituencies most often lead to polarization between two parties or two party blocs, and rational strategies by political groups result in two people being the model competitors for one seat. This is why a two-bloc system has developed in Polish Senate elections. However, this ideal duel is sometimes disrupted by so-called spoilers—candidates who, by running and attracting voters unevenly, harm one of the two stronger competitors and thereby influence the final result. Such a result may not reflect the structure of electorate preferences in the given constituency at all. In other words, the result would be different if a decisive runoff were held between the two strongest candidates.
Adam Gendźwiłł—dr. hab., political scientist, sociologist and geographer, assistant professor in the Department of Local Development and Policy at the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies of the University of Warsaw. Member of the Electoral Experts Team of the Stefan Batory Foundation. He specializes in research on local democracy, local-government politics, political parties and electoral systems, as well as the methodology of social research.