The populist PiS has an edge in these elections as the party in power during a period of prosperity. In recent years, Poland’s growth rates have put other EU economies to shame. Incomes have increased and unemployment has remained low.

Clouds on the horizon, such as food price inflation, are few and far away.

Just as importantly, PiS is the party that four years ago understood that the way to win elections is through income redistribution.

PiS stormed to power in 2015, pushing aside the centre-right Civic Platform by promising generous subsidies for families with children.

Through its “500+” programme, PiS handed out around 115 euros a month for each child to families with more than one. This summer, it extended the programme to include families with one child.

While opposition parties initially criticised “500+” as irresponsible spending, it has become too popular to touch. PiS’s two main challengers in October — Civic Platform and the left-wing Lewica alliance — both say they will keep it.

In European Parliament elections in May, PiS drew most of its support from working-class people and the lower echelons of the middle class in rural areas and small towns, as well as the elderly.

The party correctly diagnosed that the aspirations of many of these people had not been met — even after Poland joined the EU and the economy grew. It positioned itself as the party able to meet them.

At the start of the Lublin convention, after flag-waving crowds sang the national anthem, a father of five from the small town of Otwock near Warsaw took to the stage to express his gratitude for “500+” and other handouts offered by PiS.

Thanks to PiS, he said he was able to buy a house with a garden and give his kids better holidays and after-school activities.

Media later revealed (in Polish) that the man was actually a bank board member with a high income to begin with, but the gimmick showed how adept PiS has become at sublimating the “Polish dream”.

Who doesn’t want a house with a garden in the leafy suburbs of Warsaw?

Who doesn’t want a house with a garden in the leafy suburbs of Warsaw?

Still, to win another four years in office, PiS knows it cannot just pat itself on the back. So it played another bold hand at the convention, promising to double the minimum monthly wage to 4,000 zloty (around 900 euros) by 2023.

Many Polish workers are on the minimum wage and are struggling to make ends meet given a regressive tax system, expensive housing and rising food costs. That explains why PiS’s main opponents have also promised to increase it.

But opposition parties have mostly expressed their pledges as woolly percentages of average income. PiS instinctively realised that only hard figures — like 4,000 zloty — do the trick.

As part of its vision of a “Polish welfare state”, PiS has also promised, among other things, two extra months of pension payments each year for retired people by 2021, higher subsidies for farmers and improvements in road and rail infrastructure, especially linking small towns and metropolises.