The Eurosceptic PiS party, which governed the country from 2015 until late last year, on Sunday secured 34.27 percent of the vote and 239 seats in the country's 16 regional assemblies, the National Electoral Commission announced.
The ruling liberal Civic Coalition (KO) group came in second with 30.59 percent of the vote and 210 seats, the election authority said.
The vote marked the first electoral test for the pro-European Civic Coalition since it came to power in the parliamentary elections of late 2023.
While PiS came in ahead of the KO, it was still well behind the combined score of the three groupings that make up the coalition government and appeared set to lose power in some regions.
The centre-right Third Way group, a junior government coalition partner, finished third with 14.25 percent of the vote and 80 seats, according to the National Electoral Commission.
The far-right opposition Confederation group was fourth, with 7.23 percent of the vote and six seats.
The Left party, another member of the governing coalition, came in fifth, gaining 6.32 percent of the vote and eight seats.
Other parties trailed far behind, with voter turnout at 51.93 percent, the commission reported.
The results mean that the Civic Coalition looks set to take power in 11 regions, in alliance with the Third Way and the Left, while PiS is likely to retain a majority in five regional assemblies in the south and east of the country, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Poles on Sunday headed to the ballot box to elect nearly 47,000 aldermen and more than 2,500 mayors and other officials as local government elections were held across the country.
The opposition conservatives won the most seats in regional assemblies, but were outdistanced by the government coalition in mayoral races in several major cities, including Warsaw, Gdańsk, Łódź and Katowice, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Mayoral races in several other cities, including the southern city of Kraków, were inconclusive and going into run-offs.
A second round of voting, where needed, will be held on April 21.
Rafał Trzaskowski, a leading liberal politician, won his second term as mayor of the Polish capital, securing 57.41 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, his conservative rival Tobiasz Bocheński scored 23.1 percent, and leftist candidate Małgorzata Bejat garnered 12.86 percent.
Sunday’s ballot came ahead of European elections scheduled in Poland for June 9 and presidential elections next year.
(gs)
Source: IAR, PAP