Abstract
Western Pomerania was said to be called as a stronghold of the left, for the Democratic Left Alliance both in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century achieved some of the best results in the country. Only after the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and the local government elections in 2006, the electoral preferences changed towards the center of the political scene. The Civic Platform of the Republic of Poland turned out to be the change, Law and Justice to a lesser extent.
 The article presents a political analysis of the voting preferences of the inhabitants of West Pomerania in the local government elections with regard to the three mentioned parties. The aim of the research was to analyze the direction in which the electorate goes. It was checked whether the SLD was permanently eliminated and how strong the dominance of the PO was. Furthermore it was examined whether PiS is a real threat to the PO RP and whether the SLD has a chance to regain its lost position.
 It seems that regardless of the attempts made, the position of the SLD after the 2006 elections is stable and there are no indications that the Alliance could dominate the analyzed region again. However, in spite of the fact that since 2006 the PO enjoys high support, since 2014 PiS has been achieving better and better results, depriving the PO RP hegemon in its position in 2006–2014.
Highlights
For a long time West Pomeranian was said to be a so-called stronghold of the left, as the SLD recorded one of the best election results in all kinds of elections in the scale of the country
Western Pomerania was said to be called as a stronghold of the left, for the Democratic Left Alliance both in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century achieved some of the best results in the country
After the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and the local government elections in 2006, the electoral preferences changed towards the center of the political scene
Summary
For a long time West Pomeranian was said to be a so-called stronghold of the left, as the SLD recorded one of the best election results in all kinds of elections in the scale of the country. The article analyzes the electoral preferences of the inhabitants of West Pomerania during elections to organs of the local government in regard to the three groups mentioned above, which have enjoyed high support of voters both in the country and in the West Pomeranian region. Political groups that fear that the party’s banner may have bad associations, often set up the KWW on the commune or poviat scale, the name of which does not refer to a given party in any way, despite the fact that its members are on the lists. Such actions obviously hinder the analysis of voting preferences. Bearing in mind the above, it should be remembered that the groups make it difficult to classify them by, e.g.: having a left economic program and expressing right-wing ideological issues etc., and by frequent changes to the program in order to better meet the expectations of voters in order to win their votes. (Sielski, 2008, pp. 17–27; Godlewski, 2008, pp. 15–19)
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