Fig 1.
Evolution of the support for major political parties in Poland 2005–2015.
PO and PiS are the main contenders, while SLD (socialdemocrats) and PSL (peasants party) are smaller ones, existing on the scene during the whole 25 year post-communist era, with small but well entrenched core electoral base. The data on PiS group them together with two other parties, PJN and SP, which have split-off from PiS during the period, but which have since returned to form a single political entity in late 2014. As the three parties address the same electorate with very similar propositions, we treat them together in the polls analysis. Since 2007, PSL is the coalition partner of PO. Samoobrona and LPR were the coalition partners of PiS during 2005–2007, and essentially vanished from the political scene after the 2007 elections. The jump in the popularity of PO after the success in the 2007 elections is, most likely, an emotional reaction to the defeat of PiS and the end of the so called ‘4th Republic’. RP/TR (Ruch Palikota/Twoj Ruch) is a party formed in mid-2011 by a PO dissident, which has enjoyed a brief period of success between 2011 and 2012. Large symbols denote the results of the elections (parliamentary, Europarliament and first rounds of the presidential elections). Kukiz and Nowoczesna are new entrants in 2015. Data collected from various sources, with the main contribution from Mr Maciej Witkowiak, http://niepewnesondaze:blogspot:com/ and the WEB platform http://ewybory.eu/.
Fig 2.
Evolution of the local community voter preferences in Poland.
Top row: PO support in parliamentary elections in 2007 and 2011, middle row—corresponding support for PiS. There is a clearly visible, stable geographical division of the support for the two parties. Bottom row shows the results achieved by the two ‘challenger’ parties: left panel: results of RP/TR (Ruch Palikota/Twoj Ruch) in 2011, corresponding to the peak in its popularity—most of the votes come from the North-Western Poland constituencies, where PO dominates (with the exception of the Lublin region in southeast Poland, the home town of Mr Palikot, the party leader). Similar correlation is visible in the votes for Mr Kukiz in the presidential elections of 2015 (bottom row, right panel). Here too, the highest support occurs in the constituencies where previously PO was dominant, and is much weaker in the PiS dominated regions. Data and maps courtesy of Jan Borkowski http://www.mapki.ga/.
Fig 3.
Evolution of the support for the candidates in the presidential elections of 2015.
Mr Komorowski (PO) and Mr Duda (PiS) have entered the race in late 2014. The figure includes the data on the support for the independent candidate, Mr Kukiz, who has appeared in the polls in late February. The final (larger) points indicate the results of the first round of voting in the presidential elections (Md Duda: 34.76% of the votes; Mr Komorowski: 33.77%; Mr Kukiz; 20.8%). Data from various polls, via Wikipedia.
Fig 4.
Evolution of the support for major political parties in 2015.
We draw the attention to apparently flat support for PiS and PO since July, when the results of the presidential elections set in and the parties were fully involved in the parliamentary elections. Suppoprt for Mr Kukiz in the presidential elections is spliced with thew support for the Kukiz’15 committee in the parliamentary ones. Data collected from various sources, with the main contribution from Mr Maciej Witkowiak, http://niepewnesondaze:blogspot:com/ and the WEB platform http://ewybory.eu/.
Fig 5.
An example of a microscopic snapshot of the system configuration for a random distribution of the initial seed agents.
The simulation time is T = 199—just before the PO and PIS propaganda messages are switched on. The time corresponds to the evolved starting conditions (T1). Each point corresponds to a single agent. Light blue points: calm PiS supporters; dark blue: agitated PiS supporters; orange: calm PO supporters; red: agitated PO supporters. Agitated agents are localized at the boundaries of the ‘party held’ domains.
Fig 6.
Microscopic snapshot of the system configuration (for the same initial conditions) at T = 600—when the effects of the PO and PiS propaganda are well set in.
Almost all PiS agents are agitated, while PO domains remain relatively calm.
Table 1.
Parameters used in the simulations presented in Fig 10.
For time period C we provide an average value and 2σ range of the parameter sets used to study possible variants of parties’ communication strategies between July and October 2015. The set of values for time period C was chosen by the author on the basis of the observations of party media campaigns before the end of August 2015 and were used to predict the election outcome two months in advance [107].
Fig 7.
The ratio of the summed support for PiS (together with SP and PJN), PO and Kukiz, in relation to the total reported support for all parties considered within each poll.
This allows to normalize the results of the three party agent based model to the real world. Black dots: results for the individual polls, red line: best fit with a third degree polynomial, used in normalizing the raw simulation results.
Fig 8.
Microscopic snapshot of the system configuration at T = 900—one hundred time steps after Kukiz propaganda started.
The agitated PiS agents are largely immune to it, while the previously calm PO domains become invaded by Kukiz supporters. Light green: calm Kukiz supporters; dark green: agitated Kukiz supporters.
Fig 9.
Macroscopic evolution of the support for PO, PiS and Kukiz in the model.
40 × 40 squares form ‘constituencies’ and the panels show the changes in the averaged support for these constituencies. Red: PO, blue: PiS, green: Kukiz Top row: simulation time T = 600—before Kukiz party appears, middle and bottom rows: T = 850, 50 timesteps after Kukiz propaganda starts. The model reproduces qualitatively the observations from Fig 2, namely the largest gains of the newcomer (Kukiz) party are in the locations where the party employing the calm, rational communication strategy (PO) was strongest. Kukiz gains in regions dominated by highly agitated PiS supporters are the weakest. moreover, the general weakening of PO support increases the PiS lead in the constituencies previously dominated by it.
Fig 10.
Comparison of the model predictions with the actual evolution of the support for major political parties in 2015.
The vertical lines denote the fixing of the individual simulation parameters for time period C and the publication date of the arXiv preprint [107]. The points and thick lines are the actual poll results and their averages, the same as in Fig 4. The light, thin lines are individual simulation results for PO, PiS and Kukiz, calculated using the set of values for time period C was chosen by the author on the basis of the observations of party media campaigns before the end of August 2015 and presented in Table 1. The darker thin lines are ensemble averages for these simulations. Large symbols indicate the results of the presidential (May) and parliamentary (October) elections. The black dashed lines are the results of the simulations for a specific set of parameters listed in Table 2.
Table 2.
An example of the specific values for the parameters for the time period C allowing to reproduce the results of the parliamentary elections.
The corresponding evolution of support for the three parties is shown by the dashed black lines in Fig 10.