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Superforecaster Fridays: Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) Party

egx
30 November 2018

This week's forecast
Will the Law and Justice party (PiS) list win an absolute majority in the Sejm in Poland's next parliamentary election?

The Superforecasters currently assign a 72.8% probability that Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party list will win another absolute majority in next year's general election, which must be held by November 2019. With 231 seats needed for a majority in the 460-seat lower house (the Sejm), the Superforecasters expect that PiS will win a comfortable majority, although the odds that PiS does not win a majority have recently risen to 27.2%.
Another landslide victory for PiS would carry important implications for domestic politics and for broader EU politics, where PiS has launched one of the most overt populist challenges to EU norms including independent institutions and the rule of law. Although PiS has recently backtracked on its controversial Supreme Court law—which would have forced out a large number of justices and allowed PiS to swiftly appoint replacements—the government's efforts to politicize the judiciary remain highly controversial and risk flaring up again. While the EU has limited capacity to punish Poland, concerns about the rule of law will feed into discussions around the largely symbolic Article 7 sanctions process, and may indirectly result in less funds for Poland and other non-Eurozone Eastern European countries in the next EU budget from 2021 onwards.
On the domestic front, another PiS government would imply difficult choices about fiscal discipline in the coming years and uncertainty over the regulatory environment for investment. In line with the government's recent concession on the rule of law dispute, PiS will attempt to paint itself as a more moderate party ahead of the 2019 elections, particularly as local elections last month revealed the party's weakness in urban centers that are sensitive to the rule of law issue. PiS will likely focus its election campaign on economic growth as well as its highly popular welfare policies and handouts, which may prove difficult to reconcile with EU-mandated fiscal targets as growth slows over the coming years. Separately, PiS's efforts to centralize control over state institutions combined with growing questions about the judiciary's independence has increased the risk of regulatory uncertainty for investors.

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