‘Exploding inequality': The fight for the hearts and minds of Poland's left

Al Jazeera

17-05-2025

Krakow, Poland – As Adrian Zandberg, leader of Poland's left-wing Razem (Together) party, prepared to speak to the large crowd at his rally in one of Krakow's central squares on Wednesday this week, he wasn't just getting ready to contest Sunday's presidential election.
Speaking with a revolutionary zeal to the cheering crowd, Zandberg put forward his ideals: Quality public services, affordable housing for all, investment in education and science and the end to a toxic right-wing duopoly in Polish politics.
Zandberg is one of two presidential hopefuls of Poland's left – the other is Magdalena Biejat of the Lewica (The Left) party. Between the two of them, they represent a political force that has long remained on the margins of politics. Sunday's contest is also a fight for the leadership of this movement which is popular with urban, generally younger people.
Opinion polls suggest that the final presidential battle – first-round voting takes place on Sunday – will be between the two favourites, Rafał Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki, representatives of right-wing parties Civic Platform and Law and Justice (PiS) which have dominated the country's political scene for the past 20 years.
Nevertheless, Zandberg was confident and full of passion as he addressed his supporters.
'I believe that we can build a different, better Poland. I believe that we can afford for Poland to become a country with decent public services,' he declared. 'That we can afford for people in the 20th economy in the world to stop dying in line to see a doctor. That we can afford for young, hard-working people to be able to rent a roof over their heads for a normal price, so that they can afford to start a family.'
Calling the current system 'unconstitutional' and one which 'explodes with inequalities', he called for a change. The system, he said, 'is a threat to the future of Poland'.
Like other left-wing politicians, he has been a staunch critic of the neoliberal views of the two main candidates, their lack of commitment to securing affordable housing for people (which is a constitutional right), attempts to privatise the healthcare system, and their seeming embrace of rising anti-migrant sentiment within the country.
The day before, in another square in central Krakow, Biejat, Zandberg's main competitor for the hearts and minds of Poland's left and deputy marshal of the Senate, stood before her own crowd of supporters. Unlike Zandberg's Razem, her party, Lewica, is part of the ruling Civic Coalition along with the centre-right Civic Platform.
Lewica's decision to enter the coalition government in late 2023 prompted criticism among some on the left, and has become the main bone of contention between the two leftist presidential candidates.
Speaking at her rally on Tuesday, Biejat defended the decision to join the coalition as the right one. According to her, it has allowed her party to have a real effect on politics in Poland.
She listed their achievements: 'It is thanks to Lewica being in the government that we managed to introduce a pension supplement for widows. We managed to introduce a pilot programme which shortened working hours. We managed to increase the funeral allowance,' Biejat said.
'We have changed the definition of rape, so that women no longer have to explain to the judges that it was not their fault that someone had hurt them. Thanks to us, parents of premature babies have received additional leave days for each week spent in hospital with a small child.'
The Krakow crowd, albeit smaller than Zandberg's, cheered Biejat's declarations of support for the rights of women, LGBTQ people and those with disabilities and for affordable housing.
The two-term presidency of the left-wing Aleksander Kwasniewsk, an independent but also one of the founders of the Democratic Left Alliance, was highly successful. Under his presidency, which ended in 2005, Poland joined NATO and the European Union and introduced a new constitution. Since his departure, however, the left has been in crisis.
While the ideals of the left-wing candidates barely differ from those of left-wing candidates in other European countries, their appeal in Poland is limited these days as people have become disillusioned with immigration, and resentment towards the one million Ukrainian refugees taking shelter from the war with Russia has grown. According to Politico's latest aggregate poll, the two leftist candidates are each expected to win 5 percent of the vote.
In the most recent European election in 2024, Lewica secured just 6.3 percent of the vote, the lowest score in its history. In the most recent parliamentary elections of 2023, the party secured just 5.3 percent of the vote. The question now is whether leftist parties can start to make a comeback.
Some observers see signs of a possible resurgence – but it is fragile.
'Any result above 5 percent for each of the candidates [in the upcoming presidential contest] would be a good score. And below 4 percent – a bad one,' said Bartosz Rydlinski, a political scientist at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw.
He credits Zandberg with 'restarting the Razem party project' by appealing to younger voters. 'Recent studies show that he is competing with Slawomir Mentzen [the highly popular ultraconservative and free-market-enthusiast leader of the Confederation Party] to be number one among the youngest voters.
'Magdalena Biejat, on her part, represents women from the middle class, living in large cities. She is their mirror image. The election will show which one of them is more popular,' Rydlinski said.
At the last presidential election five years ago, Robert Biedron of Lewica, who now serves as a Polish member of the European parliament (MEP), won just 2.2 percent of the vote. This time around, the left is expected to do better, but its appeal remains limited.
According to experts, the left has lost much of its traditional support base to the nationalist conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which attracted voters with generous welfare packages. In this presidential election, Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, is expected to take 25 percent of the vote in the first round, according to Politico's aggregate poll.
This is despite the fact that Nawrocki has abandoned Law and Justice's commitment to social welfare and has embraced free-market thinking with a focus on strengthening an alliance with the US while distancing Poland from the EU.
His main competitor,Rafał Trzaskowski of the centre-right Civic Platform, is polling at 31 percent.'The left is continuously trying to win back pro-social Law and Justice voters, but so far it has failed,' Jakub Majmurek, a commentator at the left-wing Krytyka Polityczna media outlet, told Al Jazeera. 'First of all, because these voters are often calculating and feel that the Law and Justice is a much more credible welfare provider than the weak left.
'Second, these voters are largely pro-church and much more conservative when it comes to social issues than the left.'
A good result for the left in the Sunday election could have the effect of bringing left-wing politics back to the agenda, analysts say, and make some inroads into reversing the long-term trend of far-right and centre-right politicians dominating government.
'If the combined result of Biejat and Zandberg is around 10 percent, in the second election round, Trzaskowski or even Nawrocki will have to try to claim this left-wing electorate somehow,' Majmurek explained.
'That would be the best scenario for the left. Especially if both candidates receive a similar percentage of the vote. That would show that none of them is a hegemon and cannot build the left without the other.'