1991 Polish parliamentary election

1991 Polish parliamentary election

← 1989 27 October 1991 (1991-10-27) 1993 →
Turnout	43.20%
Sejm
All 460 seats in the Sejm 231 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader % Seats UD Tadeusz Mazowiecki 12.32 62 SLD Aleksander Kwaśniewski 11.99 60 WAK Wiesław Chrzanowski 8.74 49 POC Jarosław Kaczyński 8.71 44 PSL Waldemar Pawlak 8.67 48 KPN Leszek Moczulski 7.50 46 KLD Donald Tusk 7.49 37 PSL-PL Józef Ślisz [pl] 5.47 28 KO "S" Marian Krzaklewski 5.05 27 PPPP Janusz Rewiński 3.27 16 ChD N/A 2.36 5 UPR Janusz Korwin-Mikke 2.26 3 SP R. Bugaj & K. Modzelewski 2.06 4 SD Aleksander Mackiewicz 1.42 1 KWMN Henryk Kroll 1.18 7 PChD Krzysztof Pawłowski [pl] 1.12 4 X Stanisław Tymiński 0.47 3 RDS Zbigniew Bujak 0.46 1 LPW "Piast"[a] N/A 0.37 1 RAŚ Paweł Musioł [pl] 0.36 2 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Senate
All 100 seats in the Senate 51 seats needed for a majority
Party % Seats UD 16.42 21 SLD 10.61 4 KO "S" 9.68 11 POC 9.04 9 WAK 8.71 9 PSL 7.38 7 KLD 6.53 6 KPN 4.67 4 PSL-PL 3.14 5 PChD 2.22 3 Independents 16.18 21 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Sejm results by electoral district Government before Government after election Bielecki cabinet [pl] KLD–UD—PC–ZChN—SD Olszewski cabinet PC–ZChN—PSL-PL—SLCh

Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 27 October 1991 to elect deputies to both houses of the National Assembly.^[1] The 1991 election was notable on several counts. It was the first parliamentary election to be held since the formation of the Third Republic, the first entirely free and competitive legislative election since the fall of communism, the first completely free legislative election of any sort since 1928. Due to the collapse of the Solidarity political wing, the Solidarity Citizens' Committee, the 1991 election saw deep political fragmentation, with a multitude of new parties and alliances emerging in its wake.^[2] Low voting thresholds within individual constituencies, along with a five percent national threshold allocated to a small portion of the Sejm, additionally contributed to party fragmentation.^[3] As a result, 29 political parties gained entry into the Sejm and 22 in the Senate, with no party holding a decisive majority. Two months of intense coalition negotiations followed, with Jan Olszewski of the Centre Agreement forming a minority government along with the Christian National Union, remnants of the broader Centre Civic Alliance, and the Peasants' Agreement, with conditional support from Polish People's Party, Solidarity list and other minor parties.^[4]

460 members of parliament (poseł) were elected; 391 from 6980 candidates from 37 regional lists of candidates and 69 from country-wide lists of candidates. In the Sejm elections, 27,517,280 citizens were eligible to vote, 11,887,949 (43.2%) of them cast their votes and 11,218,602 (94.4%) of the votes were counted as valid. In the Senate elections, 43.2% of citizens cast their votes, 96.5% were valid.

Elections were supervised by the National Electoral Commission (Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza). 37 regional (okręgowe) commissions were formed, and 22,341 district (obwodowe), staffed by 197,389 citizens.

A total of 111 parties contested the elections, of which 29 won parliamentary seats. The success of the satirical Polish Beer-Lovers' Party with 16 seats gained news coverage worldwide.

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