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Hm. I've heard along those lines, but I don't find it convincing. Poland was massively, hugely disproportionately behind Ukraine for the first year of the war, and the spat with Ukraine over Ukrainian farmers was sometimes criticized in 'this benefits Putin' terms, but not as a 'soft on Russia' issue per see.
Really, one of the key points for me as an observor was that the PIS was doing doing relatively well but had a late-election slide, which suggests a typical late-emergence issue that saps support. There's nothing particularly 'soft on Russia' that comes to mind, but the two things that seemed to get the most attention/resonance in external media were the Polish-Ukraine grain dispute- which I've not seen evidence was particularly controversial in Poland- and the Visa scandal- which was a direct blemish on the government.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was an opposition coordinated turnout function that later is revealed to have been particularly impactful, but a lot of the results can be covered by a late-game motivation slump and well-timed late-game scandal. PIS was a fair deal closer to retaining power than is likely to be acknowledged.
The visa-selling scandal is particularly bad because PiS is facing two other right-wing blocs - Civic Coalition (Tusk's lot) are right-liberals and Third Way are a bit of a grab-bag but the largest party in the bloc are old-school agrarian populists. A right-wing party facing no serious right-wing opposition that fails to deliver on a right-wing agenda due to incompetence or corruption can survive for a very long time because their voters don't have anywhere to go. (Whether this applies to the GOP is left as an exercise for the reader).
Given how well Third Way did, I think a lot of social conservative voters switched from PiS to the Third Way parties in disgust at the visa-selling. They are still voting for a party in the populist quadrant of the political compass, but this time one that doesn't sell visas.
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