The Hungarian national elections are tomorrow, Sunday, April 8! Are you all as excited as I am???
Now, I recognize that some of you may have been too busy to remember our national elections. And there may even be a few of you who aren’t even totally clear where we are in the world or even who the hell we are.
Well, have a look at the map above. Notice the many European countries in blue that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
And now take a look at that sole red-colored country, indicating support for Donald Trump. Yeah, that’s us. Aren’t we lucky.
Now, I should point out before we go any further that love for Trump is primarily on the side of our government. In terms of the Hungarian people themselves, a Pew Research survey from last summer found that 57% of Hungarians have “no confidence” in Trump, while only 29% indicate “confidence” in him (though granted these numbers are notably better for Trump than in nearly all of Western Europe, where disapproval of Trump exceeds 90% of the population in many countries).
The current situation
To get up to speed on where things stand now, Daily Kos Elections International wrote up an excellent summary a few days ago of the past 8 years under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party (technically we have a coalition between Fidesz and the tiny KDNP party, but the two parties run jointly).
Basically imagine a Trump-like person, but if Trump wasn’t a complete moron but a savvy political player who knows how to skillfully manipulate and intimidate others to gain massive support and guarantee complete control over the country. That’s our leader.
However, I felt that the last two paragraphs of that otherwise well-done analysis above may have been a bit too pessimistic. Is Fidesz really guarateed of a third-straight outright victory in tomorrow’s elections?
Maybe, maybe not. Let’s not write off the democratic opposition just yet.
What do the polls say?
Let’s take a look at the latest polling numbers from the major polling institutes in Hungary:
You can see in this handy chart that the ruling Fidesz (in orange) has the most support of any party in the country. All of those polls were taken in the past month, except for the Tárki one, taken in January.
Excluding the pollster Tárki, support for Fidesz among all voting age adults ranges between 25% (in the most recent one) and 41%, depending on the pollster. The far-right Jobbik is in second place with support between 9-18%, while the Socialist Party (known locally as MSZP) is supported by 7-13% of the population. The rest are left-wing democratic parties, all with support around 5% or lower.
Also noteworthy is the grey bar on the right, indicating adults who gave the answer “other/don’t know/didn’t answer/not voting.” This is a huge group, arguably the largest of all, that ranges between 24-39% amongst the polls taken. Depending on how they break — provided they vote at all and at a significant percentage — this group could be the one that decides the results of the election.
But let’s take a look at those polls again. Just looking at the numbers for Fidesz, one can see that something’s not right with the polling when there’s a 16% difference between the various pollsters that can’t exactly be explained by the margin of error. How reliable are these polls?
Some suspect that Fidesz’ support is massively overstated. According to one observer, “Almost all pollsters do admit, however, that the strength of Fidesz is probably overestimated in the published opinion polls due to cautious voters who believe in the old adage ‘better safe than sorry.’ One cannot lose by describing oneself as a supporter of the government party while, especially in smaller places, the opposite is not true.”
If true, that is one point of encouragement for Hungary’s political opposition. But they have a real election as even more evidence of this viewpoint.
The Hódmezővásárhely earthquake
On February 25, the small town of Hódmezővásárhely held a special election for mayor. This wasn’t just any small town, but one which had been a citadel of Fidesz support for many years. Moreover, it was also the hometown of former Hódmezővásárhely mayor János Lázár, now the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, who many people call the second most powerful person in the country.
Nobody really gave the opposition mayoral candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, much of a chance. After all, the previous Fidesz candidate (who subsequently died in office) won the election in 2014 with 61% of the vote. Pre-election polls were against Márki-Zay as well.
The election results, however, shocked everyone. Márki-Zay beat the Fidesz candidate Zoltán Hegedűs by a near 16-point margin, 57-41%. News portal Index called the results “an enormous surprise, as well as the margin. Fidesz was beaten in a place where it had one-party dominance for decades, and by more than 15 percentage points.”
Márki-Zay’s victory gave the opposition enormous hope: if they could pull off a huge win in a Fidesz stronghold like Hódmezővásárhely, they could win anywhere in the country, at least theoretically.
There was a catch though: Márki-Zay was the only notable opposition candidate in the race, supported by all of the opposition parties, from the far-right Jobbik to the democratic left-wing.
The lesson was not lost on anyone. If Fidesz was to be defeated in the April 8 elections, all of the opposition parties had to rally around a single candidate, meaning that all of the other parties with weaker candidates would have to withdraw them.
Which brings us to “tactical voting.”
The tactical voting strategy
The idea of "tactical voting” has been promoted as an idea to get voters to rally around a single opposition candidate in their own voting district, the one with the most support.
One element of this has been agreements between the individual opposition parties to withdraw their own weaker candidates in favor of others with a better chance of winning. Somewhat surprisingly (at least to me), is that the parties could officially withdraw their candidates until 11am Saturday.
This means that the candidates’ names are removed from the ballot, and voters are informed of the withdrawals when they enter the polling stations. There have been a number of last-minute candidate withdrawals just in the past couple of days, including a key withdrawal at 10:57am today, only 3 minutes before the deadline.
These withdrawals are essential. “Unless candidates who have no chance of winning withdraw,” writes Eva Balogh, “they are essentially ceding the contest to Fidesz.”
Another vital element of tactical voting has been a number of websites, including Tactical Voting and Orban Has to Go!, that have sprung up in recent weeks.
These websites let voters input their location and find out the oppsition candidate with the best chance of beating Fidesz in their districts, regardless of political party, and encourage them to vote for that person.
In the end, I think this comment is pretty well informed:
As for how these two factors influence the elections tomorrow and give a chance to Hungary’s political opposition, watch this space tomorrow for the answers.