Who won Poland’s ‘referendum war’ and how will it affect the October election?

A three part referendum was held in Poland on 6 September, which included a proposal to introduce single-member ‘first past the post’ constituencies in Polish parliamentary elections. Aleks Szczerbiak writes that the referendum, which was called by the ruling Civic Platform party and was supposed to benefit charismatic ‘anti-system’ political independent Paweł Kukiz, ended in fiasco with fewer than one-in-ten Poles turning out to vote – well below the required 50 per cent turnout for the vote to be legally binding. Instead, aided by Poland’s popular new right-wing President, Andrzej Duda, the referendum allowed the opposition Law and Justice party to successfully refocus the debate onto socio-economic issues, particularly the government’s deeply unpopular pension reforms, ahead of parliamentary elections in October.