Democracy wins in Poland

Poland has been on a nasty path for the last eight years, with the ruling "Law and Justice " Party becoming increasingly bigoted, authoritarian, and undemocratic. But they had an election over the weekend, and it looks like Polish voters have thrown their would-be tyrants out:

Opposition parties appear to have won enough votes in Poland's general election to oust the ruling right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, almost complete results show.

With more than 99% of votes counted, PiS led with 35.64%, while Donald Tusk's liberal Civic Coalition party had 30.48%.

But Mr Tusk is now most likely to be able to form a broad coalition.

That would end eight years of rule under PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

And all of this on a record turnout, with more young people voting than pensioners. I guess they wanted a future that wasn't just full of hate and resentment.

The new government will have a lot of work to do: restoring abortion rights, rebuilding relations with the EU, restoring the independence of the judiciary, public service, and state media (all of which are full of PiS cronies). But at least they have a chance to do it, and turn Poland back into a modern democratic state, rather than an authoritarian Kaczynski fiefdom.