WARSAW, May 27 (Xinhua) -- The governing Law and Justice (PiS) party won this Sunday's European Parliament (EP) elections in Poland with 45.38 percent of the votes, according to official results announced by the State Electoral Commission on Monday.

The centrist European Coalition (KE) was second with 38.47 percent. The only other party to send representatives to the European Parliament from Poland is the new left-wing Wiosna (Spring) party, which garnered 6.06 percent support.

Other political forces, including from the far-right, failed to reach the 5 percent vote threshold.

The results mean that PiS will hold 27 seats, KE 22 and Wiosna 3 in the EP. Poles elected a total of 52 members of the EP, but only 51 will take up their posts until the UK exits the EU.

Voter turnout was remarkably high at 45.68 percent.

According to exit poll conducted on Sunday, PiS secured almost half of its support among the rural population, and a third from pensioners. PiS was also the preferred option in eastern Poland and among voters without a university degree.

PiS's 27 MEPs are expected to stay in their current grouping, the European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR), which also includes the UK's Conservative Party and will therefore be weakened once the UK leaves the European Union. There has been speculation that PiS MEPs might join a new grouping to be formed under the leadership of Italy's Matteo Salvini. However, for now PiS leaders have not publicly backed this scenario.

For Poles, the European elections also serves as an indication of how parties would score in this October's general elections.

"Today is a very important day. We have to value it. Our Euro-parliamentarians will be facing enormous challenges. But the decisive battle for the future of our fatherland will be in the autumn, and then we must win and we must do it by an even bigger margin," PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Sunday as the first exit poll results were announced.

Analysts say that PiS has won primarily because the Polish economy is performing very well and the PiS government has implemented popular social measures, including subsidies for families with children. PiS has also campaigned on protecting traditional values, including religion and the heterosexual family, arguing the opposition wanted to recognize LGBT rights and limit the role the Catholic Church plays in Polish society.

"Poland today is rather conservative, and when it comes to the social side, rather satisfied. Neither of these two is changing before the fall," Tomasz Lis, editor-in-chief of the liberal weekly Newsweek Poland, wrote on Twitter.

Despite PiS's victory, the PiS and anti-PiS camps continue to be close together: soon after the October general elections, PiS might form alliances with smaller forces further to the right of the political spectrum, while Wiosna might join forces with KE, putting the two camps neck and neck again.

KE might need a change of strategy if it is to do better in the general election, analysts say. Some commentators have argued that the anti-PiS opposition needs a new leader and the name of European Council President Donald Tusk has been put forward by many.

"The elections to the EP strengthened the polarisation of the Polish political class. PiS feels the breath of the European Coalition on its back, but the democrats did not win," sociologist Agata Szczesniak commented on Monday for the oko.press portal. Enditem

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