Eva says she’s never skipped a Polish election. She’s been living in Germany for 40 years, she has a German passport, and she still takes part in every election in Poland.
She first came to Germany as a Polish refugee and still has family there. Between 2015 and 2023, when the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party was in power, she saw herself as fighting for democracy and the rule of law in Poland.
Some 2 million people with Polish roots live in Germany. At least 850,000 of them only have Polish citizenship. Anyone with a Polish passport is eligible to take part in Poland‘s elections, but only an estimated 80,000 Poles in Germany made use of this right in the first election round that took place two weeks ago.
To make use of their voting right, Polish citizens living abroad need to register with the appropriate consulate, where they must show a valid Polish ID or passport. But many Polish migrants in Germany don’t have one, and the long journey to the nearest election booth can be daunting. All told, there are 54 election circuits in Germany located in large cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Munich, or Dortmund. That means that many Poles wanting to cast their votes have to travel 200 kilometers (124 miles) or more. There are no absentee ballots.
“To me, voting is a duty that I am happy to fulfill,” Eva says. That’s why she’s joining 112,000 other Poles in Germany as they cast their votes in the upcoming presidential runoff, slated for June 1.
By May 27, a quarter more had signed up for this round than had for the last. That’s a new record.
Karol Nawrocki trailing in Germany
The results from the first presidential election indicate that Poles in Germany have different voting preferences than their fellow citizens in Poland. In both countries, voters favored the liberal, pro-European Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. In Germany, this preference was higher, with 40% showing support, versus 31% in Poland.
Meanwhile, the nationalist, conservative historian Karol Nawrocki made it to second place in Poland with 29.5% of the vote. In Germany, however, he came in third, behind the far-right firebrand Slawomir Mentzen, who won 18.8% of the vote.
Nawrocki only scored 14.5% of the vote in Germany — far below the 29.5% backing he received at home.
Trzaskowski’s victory, on the other hand, came as no surprise. Five years ago, he beat the national conservative and incumbent President Andrzej Duda with 70% of the German vote. In Poland, however, he lost the election.
What’s surprising is the fact that Mentzen made it to second place in Germany, and third place in Poland. Overall, right-wing candidates brought in good results in Germany. In total, 28% of voters in Germany backed either Mentzen or the far-right, antisemitic lawmaker Grzegorz Braun. In Poland, it was about 22%.
Menzten is a member of the hard-right Confederation party. He is a member of the European Parliament, where he shares a faction with the so-called Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which Germany”s federal domestic intelligence suspects to be right-wing extremist.
Braun recently lost his parliamentary immunity after he used a fire extinguisher to put out candles lit in the Polish parliament to mark the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, and attacked a woman who tried to stop him.
Voters wary of the two-party system
Damian — not his real name — is from northern Poland and has worked in construction in Germany for years. He says he voted for Braun because “he knows how to appreciate Polish history. He preserves Polish identity.”
“Liberals don’t care about that,” the worker continues. “They want so badly to present themselves as Europeans, that they are making us servile in Brussels.” In order to stop this, he says he “definitely” needs to take part in the election.
Piotr says he couldn’t image not fulfilling his civic duty. The self-proclaimed devout Catholic has a well-paying job in Germany, where he’s been living for nearly 40 years. His children, who were born in Germany, only take part in German elections. But Piotr casts his ballot in both German and Polish elections.
“I voted for Mentzen,” he says. “He’s intelligent and understands economics quite well. And above all, he’s got nothing to do with the current system.”
Agnieszka Lada-Knefal, a political scientist specializing in Polish relations, believes this wariness of “the system” has been a key factor in determining the way many Poles in Germany cast their votes. “You can’t simply call the voters who back Braun or Mentzen ‘anti-European’ or ‘antisemitic’,” the expert contends. “Above all, they’re against the system. They don’t want Trzaskowski or Nawrocki, because those two both represent the two-party system that has been in place for years. The emigrated, because they felt disadvantaged in this system. And they don’t want to return as long as it’s still in place. They want someone new.”
‘Our AfD’
Eva says that people voting for right-wing extremists “are just voting against something.”
“They live here in Germany, they see the AfD gaining votes, and think to themselves, ‘Why shouldn’t we vote for “our” AfD?’,” Eva explains.
She says she’s on the other side of the fence. In the past years, she’s backed Trzaskowski and the center-right Civic Platform, the party of incumbent Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
But in this year’s first round of the presidential election, she voted for the social-democratic New Left party, for its pro-women’s rights platform. For her, as she puts it, “it was a matter of the heart.”
Eva knew her candidate didn’t stand a chance to win the election. Instead, she says she wanted to use her voice to back issues and demands that many Polish women care about — and to send a signal to Trzaskowski. She’s convinced the liberal candidate will win the runoff. That’s the only way Prime Minister Tusk’s current government coalition could push through reforms that President Duda is currently blocking.
Eva is certain she know who to back in the runoff. And she’s not the only one.
Every vote counts
In front of a Polish church in southern Berlin, we meet another woman, much like Eva, on her way to mass. “All my Polish girlfriends agree,” she says. “Rafal Trzaskowski is the only option. Who else?” Religion doesn’t play a role, she adds.
“Most Poles in Germany are progressive, open-minded and pro-European,” Lada-Konefal explains. “To people like this, Trzaskowski is the candidate who guarantees that Poland will also move in this direction.”
Opinion polls see both remaining candidates neck-and-neck in the runoff. Every single vote could tip the scale. To many Polish voters, no matter whether in Germany or elsewhere, the election on Sunday is not so much about who they want, but who they don’t want to see in office. Like choosing between the “lesser of two evils.”
Dana agrees. She fled to Germany after the LGBTQ+ community increasingly came under attack while the PiS party was in power. “In the first round, I voted for the candidate from the Left, because only the Left party takes people like us seriously and advocates for us,” she says. “On Sunday, I’ll be voting for Trzaskowski, because he’s not as bad as Nawrocki.”
She chooses her next words carefully. “The election won’t do any good for us queer people, anway,” she says. But a president from the PiS party could spell disaster for her community, she adds.
Piotr, who would have preferred to see his right-wing candidate Mentzen in office, agrees that the upcoming runoff is about selecting the least bad option. “As long as it’s not Trzaskowski,” he adds. “His views change too often One day, he’s Catholic, and another he’s supporting the LGBT-movement. One day he’s waving a Polish flag, and the next, it’s a European flag, or even a rainbow flag. I just don’t get it,” the Polish voter explains. “Nawrocki is getting my vote.”
This article was translated from German.
