IRELAND/POLAND:Poles living in Ireland voted overwhelmingly for a change of government in last Sunday's general election.
Figures released by the Polish embassy in Dublin show that 73 per cent of those who voted in Ireland gave their support to the victorious Civic Platform (PO) led by Donald Tusk.
A further 9 per cent favoured the Left and Democrats (LiD), an alliance of left-wing liberals and post-communists. Just over 10 per cent voted for outgoing prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's conservative Law and Justice (Pis) party.
Support for the PO was much higher among the predominantly young Irish-based Poles than among their compatriots in Poland, where the overall vote for Mr Tusk's pro-European party was 41 per cent, compared with 32 per cent for Mr Kaczynski's grouping.
Voting patterns in Dublin, Cork and Limerick were similar. The PO took its highest percentage (77 per cent) in the capital, where the great majority of votes were cast, but its vote was similarly high in Cork (73 per cent) and Limerick (76 per cent). Of a total turnout of 13,952, 9,045 cast their ballot in Dublin, 2,398 in Cork and 2,509 in Limerick.
The Polish embassy in London could not confirm the final results of the vote in the UK yesterday. However, a spokesman said: "It was not a small victory, it was a huge victory for the Civic Platform over the Law and Justice party."
In Germany, where 14,500 Poles voted, 61 per cent supported Mr Tusk's PO, 24 per cent voted for the PiS, while just under 9 per cent opted for the leftist LiD.
In the US, however, two-thirds of voters stuck with Mr Kaczynski's party. The PiS received its biggest endorsement in Chicago, the city with the biggest Polish population after Warsaw, and in New York. In Washington DC and Los Angeles, Mr Tusk's Civic Platform polled strongest. A record 174,000 Polish emigrants registered to vote at 205 polling stations around the world.
