I saw this on Instagram, leading to Threads. I don't have a Threads account and doubt that there was a useful explanation, so could someone please ELI5 this?
The way Polish people vote appears to show substantial differences following the boundaries of what parts of Poland used to be under German rule.
This is not unique to Poland. The way Germans vote show very substantial differences that follow the boundaries of what parts of Germany used to be communist East Germany (the ironically named German Democratic Republic) and what parts used to be capitalist/democratic West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany). See this:
The parts of modern Germany that were part of East Germany all seem to vote very right-wing nowadays. There will be differences caused by political boundaries that are not easily erased by political integration. If North and South Korea were to integrate into one united Korea, many decades down the line, or perhaps even centuries, there will almost certainly be lingering effects whose boundaries follow former political boundaries.
It might be referring to Germans territory east of Oder-Neisse ceded to Poland at the end of WW2 to compensate for loses to USSR (today western Ukraine + large portion of Belarus and Lithuania). Stalin essentially move Poland West by 200kms. Germans in this area were expelled and replaced with refugees from eastern territory lost to USSR, they may be a tad touchy about the whole ordeal, so potentially more liberal minded?
division in Poland is between big cities on the one hand, which tend to vote for the “liberal-left opposition”, and rural areas on the other, which tend to be pro-PiS. Smaller towns are somewhere in between. “The west of Poland happens to have more of these cities”, says Szczerbiak, while noting that eastern cities, such as Rzeszów, Lublin, and Białystok, have significant populations that vote for opposition parties.
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The way Polish people vote appears to show substantial differences following the boundaries of what parts of Poland used to be under German rule.
This is not unique to Poland. The way Germans vote show very substantial differences that follow the boundaries of what parts of Germany used to be communist East Germany (the ironically named German Democratic Republic) and what parts used to be capitalist/democratic West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany). See this:
# [Map of East and West Germany compared to the 2024 European Parliamentary Elections in Germany](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1dckfib/map_of_east_and_west_germany_compared_to_the_2024/)
The parts of modern Germany that were part of East Germany all seem to vote very right-wing nowadays. There will be differences caused by political boundaries that are not easily erased by political integration. If North and South Korea were to integrate into one united Korea, many decades down the line, or perhaps even centuries, there will almost certainly be lingering effects whose boundaries follow former political boundaries.
It might be referring to Germans territory east of Oder-Neisse ceded to Poland at the end of WW2 to compensate for loses to USSR (today western Ukraine + large portion of Belarus and Lithuania). Stalin essentially move Poland West by 200kms. Germans in this area were expelled and replaced with refugees from eastern territory lost to USSR, they may be a tad touchy about the whole ordeal, so potentially more liberal minded?
https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/12/05/do-polands-19th-century-partitions-still-influence-elections-today/
division in Poland is between big cities on the one hand, which tend to vote for the “liberal-left opposition”, and rural areas on the other, which tend to be pro-PiS. Smaller towns are somewhere in between.
“The west of Poland happens to have more of these cities”, says Szczerbiak, while noting that eastern cities, such as Rzeszów, Lublin, and Białystok, have significant populations that vote for opposition parties.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/mMkee18s4g