Political Preferences of the Ukrainian National Minority in Poland in the Elections to the European Parliament

Abstract

The paper describes, interprets, and characterizes the results of elections to the European Parliament in Poland based on the voting behaviour of the Ukrainian national minority. In the article, four European elections 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019 were considered. The research hypothesizes is that the Ukrainian national minority could have a distinct voting behaviour from their region of permanent living and voted obviously for the representatives of liberal and leftist political forces rather than for far-right and right, or even far-left candidates on the elections to the European Parliament. In the years 2004-2019, an interesting phenomenon could be observed in the elections to the European Parliament in the area of communes inhabited by the Ukrainian population. In the «Ukrainian» municipalities located in the northern part of Poland, where the electorate was rather liberal (Civic Platform) or possibly anti-system (Self-Defence) the election results did not differ from the rest of the regions. This phenomenon was inherent in both the West Pomeranian and Warmia-Masurian voivodships. On the other hand, in the Komańcza commune, which is located in the Subcarpathian voivodship, in which the conservative electorate has been the strongest, the results of the voting in the “Ukrainian” commune were significantly different from other communes of the region. In other words, the results of the elections in Komańcza were much more similar to the results obtained in northern and western Poland than to the results in the South-Eastern Poland. The article concludes that, in general, those municipalities, where the citizens of Ukrainian descent consist at least 10% of the overall population, vote for more liberal parties to the European Parliament. Instead, the support of rightwing political parties like Law and Justice, Kukiz’15, Korvin Confederation as a right-wing parties is much lower. Even during elections to the European Parliament in 2019, Law and Justice, victorious in the rest of the country, evidently had lower support in “Ukrainian” municipalities. The Civic Platform is perceived as a much more moderate party, guaranteeing, in their opinion, representatives of the Ukrainian minority a greater sense of security and comfort of living in the Polish state.