Poland's centre-right parties crushed the ruling left in parliamentary elections, exit polls and early results showed today.
Exit polls put the Law and Justice conservatives on 28 per cent and their pro-business Civic Platform allies on around 26 per cent, the biggest triumph for the heirs of the Solidarity movement, which helped trigger the fall of communism in 1989.
With results from 10 per cent of districts counted showing a similar outcome, the two parties said they wanted to rule together in the European Union's biggest new member and that talks could start this week.
"We have long said we want this coalition and there are no reasons why it shouldn't happen," said Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the likely next prime minister.
Both parties promise to create more jobs, lower taxes and weed out corruption that tainted the four-year rule of the Democratic Left Alliance, reformed former communists.
But financial markets believe a coalition led by the Civic Platform would more aggressively tackle Poland's pressing economic problems of unemployment, at 18 percent the highest in the 25-nation EU, bloated budgets and costly social security.
The Civic Platform, which has pledged to move fast with tax cuts, deregulation, privatisation and euro adoption, barely hid its disappointment that the conservatives' tough talk on crime and vows to uphold the welfare state secured them victory.