Campaign costs mounting ahead of autumn election

According to the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily, the budgets for the two front-runners were similar to those seen in 2010, with other campaign spending remaining modest.

Paweł Kukiz, who managed to come third in the initial round of elections on 10 May, spent a little short of PLN 600,000 by comparison.

However, with the parliamentary elections billed for October, the daily estimates that the ruling Civic Platform (PO) and opposition Law and Justice (PiS) will spend a combined PLN 30 million on this year’s parliamentary campaign.

While the two main parties have ample funding, the parliamentary run-off will be decisive for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and the current junior coalition partner, the Polish People’s Party (PSL).

SLD is set to spend a few million złoty – down from the last parliamentary campaign budget of PLN 24 million), while PSL’s coffers are almost empty after the last campaign set them back PLN 13 million and are still paying off debts accrued for a campaign they ran 14 years ago.

New parties with limited budgets?

Two new parties have a chance at breaking the five-percent threshold to gain seats in the Sejm lower parliamentary house: led by Paweł Kukiz and economist Ryszard Petru respectively.

According to the daily, Kukiz will not spend more than PLN 1 million on his election drive, which is set to rest on social grass-roots campaigning.

Meanwhile, it is reported that Petru wants to raise as much as PLN 15 million thanks to crowdfunding and other newer forms of financing, which are to be revealed in the near future. (jb)