Warszawa Participatory Budgeting 2023 Summary

General Information

Let's take a look at the biggest Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Poland: Warszawa. The 9th edition took place from 15th June to 30th June 2022. It's named 2023 as projects would be funded next year, but voting took place in 2022. This initiative allowed the citizens of Warsaw to propose and vote on citywide projects. Apart from that, they also had an opportunity to vote for local projects, proposed in their district. The total budget allocated for the projects was 30 339 246 PLN, and a total of 138 projects were proposed. After voting, 22 projects were selected and funded, and 30 336 684 PLN was spent.

Voter Participation

A total of 78,904 people participated in the voting process, which represents approximately 4.39% of potential voters, assuming Warsaw's population in 2022 was around 1.8 million. Unfortunately, there there's still a lot to do to raise awareness about participatory budgeting.

The average age of voters was 37.5 years.

Projects by Category

The projects submitted spanned a variety of categories, from urban greenery to public spaces and infrastructure. The chart below shows the distribution of projects across different categories.

Voter Demographics

The vast majority are online votes: 78,454 and only 450 paper ones. Interestingly, many more women than men vote.

Statistical Tidbits

In Warszawa, people can vote up to 10 projects. The average number of projects selected per voter was: 8.22. What is interesting... If you're allowed to vote for up to 10 projects, there's a high probability that you'll use your vote to the maximum and select all 10: