Will Poland’s main right-wing opposition party split?

Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work! Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support. By Aleks Szczerbiak Poland’s main right-wing opposition grouping, Law and Justice (PiS), faces its most serious internal crisis, as falling poll ratings and pressure from more radical rivals expose deep factional divisions. A bitter clash between traditionalist-conservative and modernising-technocratic factions raises the real possibility of a damaging split before the next election. Opinion poll slide PiS, Poland’s right-wing ruling party between 2015 and 2023 and currently the main opposition grouping, has been on the back foot since last autumn, when the honeymoon from its candidate Karol Nawrocki’s unexpected June 2025 presidential election victory began to wear off. The election briefly reenergised the party but also made it extremely complacent. PiS interpreted the result as a signal that it was capable of winning the next parliamentary election, scheduled for autumn 2027, on its own rather than by maintaining the broad right-wing coalition that delivered Nawrocki victory. Support for PiS has fallen to its lowest in 14 years, as the party grapples with internal division, the rise of far-right challengers, living in President Nawrocki's shadow, and the unpopularity in Poland of PiS ally Donald Trump, writes @danieltilles1 https://t.co/QRScBpEQQG — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) March 2, 2026 The party quickly lost momentum as it focused its fire increasingly on attacking the radical-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party, whose candidate Sławomir Mentzen finished a strong third in the presidential election with 14.8%. At the same time, PiS saw the emergence of another significant, and even more radical, challenger on its right flank: the Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP) led by Grzegorz Braun, who secured 6.3% of the presidential vote. Ironically, PiS was also eclipsed by Nawrocki himself, who quickly emerged as the new widely perceived leader of the Polish right. According to the Politico Europe opinion poll aggregator, the party saw its average ratings decline sharply from 32% in September 2025 to only 24% in May, compared with 35% for the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO), the main governing party led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Confederation’s support has remained steady at 15% and Braun’s party is on 9%. Open factional conflict On top of that, PiS’s internal cohesion, and possibly even survival as a unitary grouping, was threatened by increasingly bitter and open factional divisions. These have been a constant feature of the party but became more public and pronounced as PiS’s polling support declined. The divide is primarily strategic rather than a fundamental disagreement over core ideology and centres on how the party should respond to declining support and political competition on its right flank. The traditionalist-conservative faction, often referred to humorously as the “butter-makers” (maślarze), is more Eurosceptic and advocates a clearer right-wing agenda that includes pushing ahead with radical state reconstruction and promoting a conservative vision of national identity and traditional values. In their reading, PiS is losing support to its right-wing competitors because it is not radical enough and the solution is to sharpen its ideological profile and double down on hardline rhetoric. The national-conservative opposition PiS party has named its candidate to be prime minister if it wins next year’s parliamentary elections. Przemysław Czarnek is a hardline conservative who played a prominent role in PiS's campaign against "LGBT ideology" https://t.co/sSJLON00hW — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) March 7, 2026 The modernising-technocratic wing, commonly known as the “scouts” (harcerze), led by former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, also has strong conservative values and has at times been very critical of Poland’s post-1989 establishment. However, they emphasise economic competence, pragmatic governance and boosting Polish prosperity over moral-cultural issues as a more effective way of appealing to voters less influenced by traditional institutions such as the Catholic Church. They prefer to avoid escalating conflict with the EU and argue that PiS must broaden its appeal to attract younger, urban, more centrist-conservative Poles who find radical cultural rhetoric off-putting. The conflict has become so destabilising because, although rooted in genuine programmatic and strategic disagreements, personal ambitions and rivalries also play a major role. Morawiecki would like to be prime minister again, while his supporters also want prominent positions but are afraid they will be sidelined or excluded when PiS draws up candidate lists for the next election. Morawiecki’s counter-move This long-simmering struggle escalated last month when Morawiecki announced the formation of Development Plus (Rozwój Plus), a think tank-like platform focused on socioeconomic issues. It came shortly after PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński designated hardliner Przemysław Czarnek as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, a clear signal favouring the ideological base-consolidating strategy over Morawiecki’s centrist outreach. The launch of Development Plus was widely interpreted as a countermove by the increasingly marginalised modernising-technocratic faction to shore up its position by building an independent power base. The right-wing opposition PiS party has threatened disciplinary action, including exclusion from electoral lists, against dozens of its MPs who have joined a new internal group led by former PM @MorawieckiM and intended to appeal to more moderate voters https://t.co/y62Cm361U2 — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 17, 2026 However, it was perceived by hardliners as a direct challenge to party unity and Kaczyński’s authority. The leadership ruled that Development Plus violated the PiS statute, which explicitly prohibits members from joining political organisations that conflict with the party’s goals. It warned that any politicians involved, reportedly around forty parliamentarians, including several former government ministers, risked exclusion from the party’s candidate lists and even expulsion. For his part, Morawiecki maintained that his new association was simply a modest intra-party economic policy forum and that similar organisations existed within PiS in the past. He insisted that he remained loyal to the party and wanted to contribute towards defeating the Tusk government by promoting plans for Poland’s economic development. However, by registering a new association with local structures and dozens of parliamentarians, Morawiecki gave his faction a formal institutional shell that could act as the precursor to a future breakaway party. In the event, Kaczyński and Morawiecki appeared to come to an agreement – whereby Development Plus would work within an official party expert group – that has, for now at least, averted a split. A late-night meeting between PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Mateusz Morawiecki, who heads a more moderate faction in the party, has led to an agreement ending a dispute over a new association founded by Morawiecki and joined by dozens of PiS politicians https://t.co/r2SJK4ceyu — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 21, 2026 Nonetheless, the new association moved the sphere of contestation from manoeuvring and programmatic debate to a tangible act of organisational defiance. In doing so, it exposed how fragile party unity has become and raised real questions about a potential formal split or major purge as the party factions work actively towards each other’s marginalisation ahead of the next election. Safeguards eroded Indeed, the likelihood of a major split is currently much greater than at any point in PiS’s history because the safeguards that previously held it together have eroded. With PiS polling at its lowest levels for over a decade and the broader right-wing vote fragmented three ways, the party is no longer the undisputed hegemon on the Polish right. In earlier crises, this gave Kaczyński leverage to keep everyone on board so that disagreements were managed internally, and even disillusioned figures usually stayed, or returned, to the party. Some in Morawiecki’s camp may calculate that a cleaner conservative-centrist grouping could perform well enough to secure a pivotal position in the next parliament. Although Kaczyński’s formal leadership remains unquestioned, with visibly weakening health his influence is steadily diminishing. As the party’s founder, main ideologue and ultimate arbiter between the rival camps, he has long served as the crucial key source of balancing and containing the factions and maintaining unity. Kaczyński’s declining authority is creating a power vacuum, allowing intraparty rivalry to become more open and public. Morawiecki is also one of PiS’s most recognisable figures after Kaczyński himself. He has a sizeable bloc of followers, much larger than any previous faction, that includes high-profile figures openly declaring loyalty to him. The sheer size and visibility of Development Plus, the involvement of a political heavyweight with so many prominent allies, and a level of organisation that makes them difficult to isolate, all mean that expelling the association would have outsize political consequences. At the same time, allowing Morawiecki’s grouping to operate has legitimised parallel structures and undermined Kaczyński’s authority, signalling that he is no longer fully in control of the party. Neither side wants an immediate split Nonetheless, even if this dispute culminates in a split, it is in neither the party leadership nor Morawiecki’s interests for this to take place now, which is why both sides are manoeuvring so carefully. For Kaczyński, forcing or allowing a major rupture with nearly a year-and-a-half until the election would weaken PiS’s parliamentary representation, possibly to the extent that it could no longer guarantee upholding presidential vetoes (which require a three-fifths majority to overturn). An immediate, open, public split could also ensure prolonged negative headlines for months, reinforcing the narrative that PiS is destroying itself at a time when it should be criticising the ruling coalition. The moment when Kaczyński would be in the strongest position to move against Morawiecki’s faction is late spring/early summer 2027 during the preparation of candidate lists. These are the ultimate instrument of party discipline, and Kaczyński has exercised near-total control over the process. He could simply announce internal rules that only those whom he deems fully loyal to the party will be placed high enough to win seats, and Morawiecki’s supporters could then be quietly downgraded to unwinnable positions or left off entirely. At this point, much closer to polling, such a threat is far more intimidating than an abstract ultimatum issued now, and any resulting split would give the breakaway group less time to organise and campaign independently. Poland's right-wing opposition is increasingly divided since President Nawrocki's election victory. But it still looks on track to win a majority at the next parliamentary election, with Nawrocki potentially acting as a key figure, writes @AleksSzczerbiak https://t.co/G8GcFu2PjL — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 29, 2025 On the other hand, ironically, a split closer to the election may also in some ways be more strategically advantageous for Morawiecki’s faction. It would be a high-drama political event dominating the news cycle at a point when voters are starting to pay more attention, allowing a breakaway to maintain a sense of momentum and “newness” right up until polling day. Ideally for Morawiecki, his supporters need to be forced out of the party so that they can portray themselves as the moderate victims of an ideological purge, rather than a disloyal splinter group further dividing an already fragmented Polish right. In fact, there is some speculation that Kaczyński might actually want (or at least tolerate) a split precisely in order to create a new technocratic-conservative political vehicle that could peel away voters from the governing camp’s softer centrist-leaning periphery. However, although there may be some strategic logic to this, it runs directly counter to Kaczyński’s long-standing and consistent preference for keeping all the different ideological currents within a single “big tent” party. Moreover, it is highly uncertain whether such a breakaway would actually draw a significant number of voters away from the governing camp rather than simply further dividing the right-wing opposition. Initial polling suggests that Morawiecki’s putative grouping would only enjoy around 5-6% support, barely enough to cross the parliamentary representation threshold, whereas to be successful Polish party start-ups should attract at least 10% initially simply because of their “newness”. Nonetheless, even though an imminent (or even eventual) split in PiS is rationally against everyone’s interests, the current dynamics could still produce such an outcome. There is an increasingly deep, almost visceral hostility between the two factions, and Polish politics, like politics everywhere, is often driven by such raw human emotions. These can develop their own momentum and escalate out of control, overriding cool cost-benefit calculations and more rational shared collective interests in maintaining unity, especially if walking away from a confrontation is interpreted as weakness. The intense, self-reinforcing media spiral can also raise the emotional temperature and turn every statement and policy disagreement into a public spectacle, making calm negotiation and compromise much more difficult. A dangerous moment A combination of the fragmentation of the Polish right, a weakened Kaczyński, and a formal parallel organisation with sizeable parliamentary representation and a high-profile leader creates a uniquely dangerous moment for PiS. The party has absorbed or neutralised earlier challenges, and a full split is still not certain, as Morawiecki and his allies fear being labelled the ones who are dividing the right. Nonetheless, no previous crisis has combined so many unstable elements at once and the probability of a major split is higher than ever in the party’s history; although both the party leadership and the Morawiecki bloc will try to delay it coming to a head until the candidate list-making process begins. The coming weeks and months will determine whether the balance tips towards rupture or compromise. Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support. Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. The original version of this article appeared here.