After a brutal campaign, Poland gets ready to vote

ELBLAG, A GRITTY port where the air stings from factory soot, is not exactly full of latte-sipping cosmopolitans. In Poland’s bitterly divided politics, urban voters mostly back liberals; in Elblag in 2019 the ruling hard-right Law and Justice (PiS) party came first. Yet when Donald Tusk, the centrist running to unseat PiS, arrived for a rally on September 28th, the hall was jammed. For years, he cried, PiS had packed Poland’s courts and bickered with the EU. Mr Tusk (pictured), who served as prime minister from 2007-14 and then as president of the European Council, promised to end all that: “Europe is freedom, the rule of law, the fight against corruption.” PiS was trying to brainwash Poles, he said, just as the communists and Nazis had.