How street name changes can affect electoral results: evidence from Polish decommunisation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article presents the process of changing street names in Poland after the central government introduced a law in 2016 requiring the elimination of all communist symbols from the public space; it also provides a quantitative analysis of the impact of changing street names on the electoral results of the ruling party. The study results, based on outcomes from over 26,400 polling stations, demonstrate that stations located near streets with decommunised names produced lower election results for the ruling party than in other parts of the country. This suggests that – although the majority of the Polish society has a negative view of the communist dictatorship – introducing an ideologically and politically motivated policy that generates economic costs for citizens may lead to a drop in the ruling party’s electoral results.