WARSAW — A bad-tempered split in Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party is being greeted with joy by the centrist, pro-EU government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, but it’s unclear whether it will improve his odds of retaining power in next year’s election.

Tusk’s Civic Coalition is far ahead in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls — with 32 percent support, compared with PiS’s 21 percent — but that does not offer a full picture of the electoral dynamics. All of the parties on the right together could still command a majority — but only if they’re able to cobble together a coalition after next year’s vote. Three of Tusk’s four junior coalition partners may fail to clear the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament.

Renata Mieńkowska-Norkiene, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw, called Tusk’s chances in the 2027 race “far from certain.”

However, the departure of former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki from PiS complicates the balance of balance of power on the right.

PiS, which ruled from 2015 to 2023, formally ruptured last month, when Morawiecki stormed out, taking 40 MPs with him to form the new Development Plus party, leaving PiS with 147 deputies.

The split between him and party founder and leader Jarosław Kaczyński quickly became acrimonious.

Morawiecki criticized his own government’s decisions on Covid-19 restrictions and its push to tighten Poland’s abortion law, which outraged many women and saw PiS take a long-term hit in public support.

“Although I oppose abortion, I believed the change would lead to catastrophe — a polling collapse. Unfortunately, I was right,” Morawiecki said on the popular YouTube show Rymanowski Live this week.

He is now trying to set up a more moderate center-right party focused on economic growth which is less partisan than PiS. “Today, Poland does not need to get bogged down in ideological disputes,” he said in Monday’s interview. However, he has ruled out ever working with Tusk in the future.

Kaczyński responded by appearing to question both Morawiecki’s loyalty and his state of mind.

“Mateusz Morawiecki’s latest statements show clearly that his enemy is not Tusk, but me and Law and Justice. I have the impression that the prime minister is in some peculiar state. God willing, I am wrong,” Kaczyński said in a post on X.

He twisted the knife in another post on Friday, denouncing “attacks based on lies, manipulation, and insinuations,” made by “people who, until recently, pretended they wanted to be part of PiS but decided to break away.”

Mateusz Morawiecki is pictured in Brussels in March 2023. | Pool photo by Olivier Matthys via AFP/Getty Images

Tusk is watching the fallout with joy.

“I watch what is happening with a smile,” Tusk said at a press conference last week when asked about the turmoil within the largest opposition party.

Unclear political picture

Although PiS and Civic Coalition have been alternating in power for more than two decades, Poland’s current political makeup is a lot more complicated.

Two new parties are battling for votes on the far-right — the libertarian Confederation, with 14 percent support, and the antisemitic extremist Confederation of the Polish Crown, at 11 percent.

The two far-right parties are fighting each other, and also taking aim at PiS.

“I feel the next prime minister should not be from PiS,” Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of Confederation, said in a radio interview this week.

Wojciech Machulski, a party spokesperson, denounced Morawiecki as a “puppet” with a terrible governing record but also noted: “Kaczyński is no longer the leader of the right; he no longer dominates the right.”

Political analysts warned that Tusk should not assume the split will benefit his coalition.

The Kaczyński and Morawiecki parties could appeal to a broader range of voters by campaigning separately, while Tusk’s prospects depend heavily on the survival of the weakest members of his coalition, said Mieńkowska-Norkiene.

“What is more, Morawiecki could attract more conservative voters from those parties,” she added.

Morawiecki is already campaigning in an effort to reach beyond PiS’s traditional right-wing electorate — this week laying out a new strategy to combat Poland’s low birth rate.

“A right-wing party without a clear identity-based agenda will not be a right-wing party. But a right-wing party without a development agenda and without the ability to implement change will never come to power,” he said in his party manifesto.

Anna Siewierska-Chmaj, a political scientist at the University of Rzeszów, said Tusk’s governing coalition should not rely on its enemies devouring themselves and should instead use the summer break to overhaul its political messaging. Many voters are fed up with the government’s lackluster results — although part of that stems from PiS-aligned President Karol Nawrocki blocking a lot of legislation.

“The old polarization strategy of ‘us versus PiS’ will no longer suffice,” she said.