Money Talks at the Polling Station: EU-Funds Conditionality and the 2023 Polish Election

In October 2023, shortly after the European Union froze Poland's recovery and cohesion funding over a rule-of-law dispute, the incumbent Law and Justice (PiS) government lost office. A growing literature argues that EU conditionality may produce electoral effects in backsliding member states, but the claim has rested almost entirely on supply-side evidence, while demand-side survey experiments have returned consistent nulls. This paper offers the first individual-level demand-side test of vote choice, using a 2023 Polish election-day exit poll whose rotated items reached some 2,600 voters each. Unblocking the suspended EU funds was the single most salient priority voters named, and those who prioritised it sorted overwhelmingly, and across all three coalition parties, towards the parties committed to compliance rather than rallying behind the incumbent. The sorting held under both the material and the principled framing of the conflict. An EU dispute can thus become a first-order electoral cleavage without concerning membership or integration.