This Sunday’s election promises a landslide for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) Party, bolstered by four years of popular welfare measures and nationalist-conservative rhetoric. Polls indicate that the right-populist party will take between 40 and 45 percent of the vote — up from 37.5 percent in 2015.

Like in Hungary and Italy, Poland’s right-populists pose as an alternative to the neoliberal consensus, allying social measures with their own racist and homophobic ideas. While the center-right opposition serves up empty phrases about democracy and fiscal responsibility, after years of austerity the mass of Poles seems attracted by PiS’s talk of social redistribution.

Yet while the populist right is the likely big winner of the October 13 vote, the picture is not only a negative one. While PiS offers its vision of welfare only to some Poles, in its attempt to bolster Polish nationalism and so-called family values, the election also looks set to offer gains for left-wingers who challenge PiS’s chauvinist agenda.