Polish Election
Campaign Poster
Will Poland's SMS And The Internet Determine The New Polish Government
Warsaw, Poland 19 October, 2007 There is a sudden wave of activity in Poland that is targeting the young Polish voters and urging them to vote in the Polish elections that will be held on Sunday. Being generally internet and SMS based, it is unprecedented and may have a major effect on the election results.
It started quietly and took many by surprise. The general public did not have much information about what was happening until the Law And Justice Party (PIS) publicly accused the Civic Platform (PO) of being behind a widely broadcast SMS message that advised voters to "hide Granny's ID". With PIS targeting the older vote and the requirement for presenting one's ID at the voting station, PIS was very concerned about what might happen if young people starting hiding IDs so the older people can't vote.
PO denied being behind the message.
The publicity itself may have helped popularized the use of SMS messages to sway the vote. Since the PIS complaint, there has been a growing wave of other SMS messages advising people to vote. Many have been biased toward voting against the PIS while others are pushing the concept of voting with gloves.
The concept of voting with gloves is a French concept that urges people to vote even though they do not particularly like anyone on the ballot. Many French voted with gloves for Chirac as a vote against Le Pen. In the Polish campaign, Tusk and Kaczynski have become the equivalents of Chirac and Le Pen.
With many young people critical of Tusk, but not liking Kaczynski, the vote with gloves campaign is seen as an obvious anti-Kaczynski campaign.
In conjunction with the SMS campaign, the anti PIS people have been using the Polish instant messaging system Gadu Gadu to broadcast the same messages. There are general broadcasts backed up by individuals forwarding messages to their contacts.
Electioneering on the Internet is also very heavy. Web pages, many of which are cabaret in nature, criticize PIS. With caricatures of Kaczynski annotated with "Little Brother is watching" people are urged to get out and vote.
Spam email promotes parties and general voting.
The on-line campaign has been supplemented with an offline poster campaign that is unprecedented in Warsaw.
Posters urging people to vote can be found in many apartment buildings in the Ursynow district of Warsaw. Ursynow is heavily populated by young people who are generally PO supporters.
One poster in an apartment building, (see picture top left) reads, "Go Vote! The Mayor of your district warns! If you do not take the opportunity to vote, someone else will choose for you. Warsaw needs your vote."
A walk through the Warsaw centrum reveals a large number of posters supporting PO in small shops. There's a notable lack of similar posters supporting PIS.
SMS and Internet campaigns have not been lost on the young Poles who have left Poland for work in the West. It is reported, for example, that this year upwards of 169,000 people in the West have registered to vote. That is about a 10 times increase over the number registered to vote in the last election.
It has been projected that Priest Taduesz Rydzyk, using his Radio Marya can deliver as many as 1.5 million votes for the PIS. Whether this, what appears to be grassroots, campaign is enough to offset Rydzyk and the Catholic Priests who might, on Sunday, advise people in the churches on how to vote, will only be known after the elections.
But as it stands, local chatter seems to indicate that it will do something.
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