Less than half of people in Poland, 47%, say that homosexuality should be accepted by society, according to the latest polling data from the Pew Research Centre, an American think tank. That is higher than the proportion of Poles, 42%, who say it should not be accepted.
The level of acceptance in Poland has risen since 2002, when Pew first conducted the survey. Eighteen years ago, only 40% said that homosexuality should be accepted, while 48% believed it should not. In the last study, in 2013, the figures were 42% and 46% respectively.
Its findings correspond to other polling in Poland, which has found falling numbers saying that homosexuality should not be tolerated and growing support for the introduction of same-sex civil partnerships.
Pew’s latest study, however, was conducted in Poland in spring 2019, before much of the anti-LGBT rhetoric that featured in campaigning for May’s European elections, October’s parliamentary ones, and which has recently reemerged during President Andrzej Duda’s bid for re-election.
The new figures for Poland put it well below the levels of acceptance in western Europe, which range from 86% in the UK to 94% in Sweden. But it is similar to Poland’s central European peers of Hungary (49%), Czech Republic (59%) and Slovakia (44%).
Further to the east, the figures fall even further: to 32% in Bulgaria, 28% in Lithuania (the lowest among all EU member states surveyed), and just 14% in both Ukraine and Russia.
Outside Europe, figures are high in western countries such as the United States (72%) and Canada (85%), low in the African states of Kenya (14%) and Nigeria (7%), and vary widely across Asia, from 9% in Indonesia to 73% in the Philippines. The median among all 34 countries surveyed is 52%.
As in other countries, Poland displays higher acceptance among the youngest 18-29 age group (60%) than among those aged over 50 (33%). There is also greater acceptance from Polish women (53%) than men (41%), and among the better educated (64%) than those with less education (40%).
Those in Poland who identify as having left-wing views also have a higher level of acceptance (67%) than self-declared centrists (53%) and people on the right (38%). Among Poles who think that religion is very important, only 29% accept homosexuality; of those who do not, the figure is 53%.
It has been Poland’s conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which places great emphasis on the importance of the Catholic faith, that has led the recent campaign against “LGBT ideology”. And Pew finds that among Poles who say homosexuality should be accepted, 59% view PiS unfavourably and 36% view it favourably.
Pew’s study is based on telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted on representative national samples in 34 different countries. Its sample size in Poland was 1,030, with a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Image credits: Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2019
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
