Populists eye victory in deeply divided Poland

WARSAW: Poles began voting Sunday in a polarizing election the governing populists look set to win after a flurry of welfare giveaways and attacks on LGBT rights and western values but their majority could be at risk.

The opposition received an unexpected last-minute boost when author Olga Tokarczuk, a known government critic who won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, urged Poles to choose wisely “between democracy and authoritarianism,” calling the vote the “most important” since Poland threw off communism in 1989.