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When a democracy descends toward autocracy, sometimes not winning is a win. That helps explain comments from the leader of Poland’s Civic Platform party following one of Europe’s most consequential elections this year.

“I have never been so happy in my life as I am with this second place,” said Donald Tusk after Poles voted – in record turnout – for a new Parliament last Sunday.

While his party achieved a stronger showing than in the past, it also demonstrated something missing in the top vote-getter, the ruling Law and Justice party, known by its acronym PiS. Mr. Tusk’s party had made a pre-election pact with two other parties to restore freedom for news media and independence for the judiciary – both of which PiS had eroded over eight years in power.

“Poland won. Democracy won,” explained Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council. The combined votes of the three parties are expected to allow them to form a majority in Parliament, although the political horse-trading could take months and PiS may use its entrenched power to fight back.

While the election dealt with a host of hot issues, many voters rewarded the three parties for not treating one another as the enemy. Instead, the parties politely engaged so they might preserve the virtues of political pluralism or, in the words of the United States motto, “e pluribus unum.”

Those virtues include the humility to listen to different views and the goodwill to treat opponents in a way that one wants to be treated. That essence of democracy – nurturing mutual trust despite lively debates – has been in decline not only in Poland but also in Hungary. Both countries have faced European Union sanctions for their threats to democracy and the unity of the 27-member bloc.

Democracies gain when citizens cherish their engagement in discussing alternative views and when they remain open to self-correction. Demonizing opponents prevents an opportunity to refine the best ideas for shared purpose.

“There seems to be an assumption that what has won in Poland is liberalism, because illiberalism has lost, but actually what has won is pluralism,” Ben Stanley, a political scientist at SWPS University in Warsaw, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Or as Mr. Tusk, the second-place winner, put it, “We won our beloved democracy.”