Poland
Poland has its own long-running version of school mock elections. "Młodzi głosują" ("Young People Vote") is organized by Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej (CEO), the Centre for Civic Education, a Warsaw-based educational foundation. In participating schools, students vote for the real candidates and committees on the actual ballot, in the week before real polling stations open, and results are published nationally alongside media coverage of how the school vote compared to the real one.
History
Centre for Civic Education (CEO) was founded in 1994, in the years after the end of communist rule, to bring genuine civic education into Polish schools. "Młodzi głosują" followed in 1995, first run during that year's presidential election. It has continued alongside nearly every national election and referendum since, reportedly reaching several thousand schools and over three million student voters across all editions combined.
How it works
A team of student organizers, supported by a teacher, runs the vote in each school: a turnout campaign, an election commission, and a count, using the same candidates and committees as the real election. School voting takes place in the week before real polling day. The organizers publish national totals; individual schools often publish their own results separately. Unlike Slovakia's Student Elections, we found no evidence of an official region-by-region results breakdown, and no confirmed edition tied to local government elections.
Scale
In the 2023 parliamentary election, 598 schools and roughly 194,000 eligible students took part, with 53.2% turnout. In the 2024 European Parliament election, 289 schools and about 80,000 eligible students took part, with 46.3% turnout, actually higher than the real adult turnout that year. In the 2025 presidential election, close to 700 schools and around 190,000-200,000 eligible students took part, with turnout around 53%.
2025 presidential election
The 2025 school vote made national news because it looked so different from the real result: Confederation's Sławomir Mentzen and Razem's Adrian Zandberg topped the school vote, while the two candidates who went on to the real run-off, Rafał Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki, together won only about 20% of student votes, roughly 41 percentage points below their combined real first-round result. It was covered by outlets including TVN24, Głos Nauczycielski and Gazeta Prawna.