Poland shows that populists can be beaten

Liberals do not get much to cheer them up these days, but the news from Warsaw this week qualifies. Confounding fears that many disenchanted voters might simply stay at home, Poles turned out in record numbers on October 15th to vote down the populist-nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party that has run the country for the past eight years. They gave what looks like a solid mandate for government to an opposition alliance headed by Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and a former head of the European Council to boot. The alliance won 248 seats in the 460-member Sejm, or lower house of parliament, and 66 of 100 seats in the Senate, the weaker upper house.