1922 Polish legislative election

1922 Polish legislative election

5 November 1922 (1922-11-05) (Sejm) 12 November 1922 (1922-11-12) (Senat)
All 444 seats to the Sejm
Majority party Minority party Third party   130x130px 130x130px Leader Stanisław Głąbiński Yitzhak Gruenbaum Wincenty Witos Party ChZJN BMN Polish People's Party "Piast" (1913–1931) Leader since November 1920 1922 1 December 1918 Leader's seat 50 – Lwów 1 - Warszawa 84 - Tarnów Last election 140 – 46 Seats won 163 66 70 Seat change 23 New 24 Popular vote 2,551,582 1,398,250 1,153,397 Percentage 29.1% 16.0% 13.2%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   130x130px 130x130px Leader Stanisław Thugutt Ignacy Daszyński Jan Stanisław Jankowski Party PSL "Wyzwolenie" PPS [[National Workers' Party|Template:National Workers' Party/meta/shortname]] Leader since 1921 1921 1920 Leader's seat 15 - Konin 42 - Kraków county none Last election 59 35 32 Seats won 49 41 18 Seat change 10 6 14 Popular vote 963,385 906,537 473,676 Percentage 11.0% 10.3% 5.4%
300px Winning party by electoral districts

Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 5 November 1922, with Senate elections held a week later on 12 November. The elections were governed by the March Constitution of Poland, and saw the Christian Union of National Unity coalition emerge as the largest bloc in the Sejm with 163 of the 444 seats.

The resulting coalitions were unstable, and the situation - difficult from the start, with assassination of Polish president Gabriel Narutowicz in December shortly after the elections - culminated in 1926 with the May Coup.

Ethnoreligious voting analysis

According to Kopstein and Wittenberg, 39% of the majority Catholic population voted for right-wing parties, 29% for non-revolutionary left-wing parties and 25% for centrist parties. The other ethnoreligious groups, including Uniates, Jews and Orthodox Christians voted largely for parties representing minority groups.

Some regional differences were observed; in western Poland, 9% of the Catholic vote went to minority interest parties, which has been attributed in part to German Catholic voting, but in the east, only 1% did. Ethnic Polish support for the right wing was stronger in the east of the country, where 40% voted for right-wing parties, as opposed to the south where 16% did. No detectable regional variation existed among Jews. The lack of support for the center and right among the major minorities (Jews, Ukrainians and Belarusians) was attributed to ethnic polarization that was exacerbated by discrimination and chauvinism from Polish officials. Despite the success of minority parties, parties describing themselves as "Polish" refused to form a government with minority parties, and there was not one non-ethnic Polish cabinet member in the interwar period, though interethnic cooperation could still be seen in Ukrainian and Belarusian support for the Sikorski government.

Estimates of voting patterns by ethnoreligious groups
Religion	Communists	Nonrevolutionary left	Minority interest parties	Center	Right-wing	Overall share (1921 census)
Catholic	2%	29%	4%	25%	39%	64%
Uniate	3%	2%	77%	1%	5%	12%
Orthodox Christian	8%	37%	66%	1%	1%	10%
Jewish	4%	18%	65%	2%	4%	11%
Overall share (1921 census)	2%	16%	24%	25%	34%

Further reading

• A. J. Groth, Polish Elections 1919-1928, Slavic Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1965), pp. 653–665 JSTOR