WARSAW — Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party built its core support among older, poorer people far from the largest cities; its leader Jarosław Kaczyński didn’t even have a bank account and a driver’s license when he became prime minister in 2006.
But now the party and its supporters have built a cutting-edge social media operation — with an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Periscope and a host of other platforms — one of the reasons that Law and Justice (PiS) is breaking through with younger, urban voters and looks set to win parliamentary elections on October 25. A new opinion poll, by the IPSOS organization, has PiS at 36 percent and the ruling Civic Platform (PO) trailing with 22 percent.
“That’s been the biggest surprise of this campaign,” said Eryk Mistewicz, a political marketing expert and publisher of the Nowe Media quarterly. “Until now PiS was a very traditional 20th century party, relying on long speeches by its leader. But in this campaign the party has built a much better social media presence, while Civic Platform has slept through the new media revolution.”
The two parties have similar numbers of followers on more traditional social media like Twitter, and Law and Justice had 108,000 likes on its Facebook page last week while Civic Platform had 73,000. But PiS’s biggest breakthrough has been in the harder-to-measure outlets like Snapchat, where building a core of followers is largely a matter of trust between friends, Mistewicz said.
With its new Internet mantra in mind, PiS held its third-ever “tweetup” two weeks before the election, in an underground Warsaw student club. The format is simple: invite young activists, bloggers and journalists, give them a chance to meet party bigwigs, have a good time — and tweet about it.
“You, me, them, him too — we have an influence on the result of the elections” — party video.
After a briefing on the importance of social media, guests sat down to watch Poland play Scotland in a qualifier for the European 2016 football championships. The guest of honor was Beata Szydło, the party’s candidate for prime minister, who sported a red-and-white Poland football scarf over her neat navy-blue jacket.
“The Internet has a huge meaning in our current campaign,” Szydło told POLITICO, pointing to the role of social media in Andrzej Duda’s upset victory in May’s presidential election, a campaign she managed.
The party recently released a step-by-step video clip on how to use social media. “In this era of new media, we are an information service. You, me, them, him too — we have an influence on the result of the elections,” the voiceover said, encouraging supporters to share content on Facebook and Twitter. “Then repeat, again and again, but not so that all your friends block you on Facebook,” it joked.
Although senior PiS politicians such as Szydło are taking the Internet seriously, the offensive is being powered by millennials like Paweł Szefernaker, head of the PiS Youth Forum. His team has a dozen members and works “like a well-oiled machine,” he said.
Just like during Duda’s presidential campaign, they are banking on relatively cheap, fun video clips that can go viral online, like one involving a chuckling Duda reading out negative Twitter comments about himself. PiS also has a vast network of volunteers to post material online. An army of right-wing trolls? “Not trolls. They only post official material,” said Szefernaker.
The effort to court young voters dovetails with an anti-incumbent mood in the country. A recent poll by CBOS found Poles under the age of 25 to be most hostile to the Civic Platform-led government, with 45 percent opposed.
The problem for Civic Platform is that it has largely relied on television, daily papers and weekly magazines “to get into the brains of voters,” said Mistewicz, which has reinforced its image as a slightly fusty party of power, while neglecting to build highly motivated cadres of social media activists.
“That’s not something you can go out and buy. It has to be built up over time, and PO didn’t do that,” he said.
The social media campaign has also changed perceptions about PiS. Until last year, and the departure of the fairly charismatic Donald Tusk, who quit as prime minister to become president of the European Council in Brussels, Law and Justice was the kind of party that younger people were embarrassed to admit they supported. But now that label is stuck to Civic Platform as a party exhausted after eight years in government with no verve and ideas to offer younger voters.
Spirits high after the football match (a 2-2 draw), PiS’s youthful supporters gathered on stage for a final photo with Szydło.
They are not only a valuable resource that can be mobilized ahead of the elections, but also a “circle of friends who work hard and then enjoy their success together,” Szydło said.