Tactical voting and the struggle to unite the Hungarian opposition in the 11th hour

Five days before the 8th April vote, opposition parties are struggling to unite in swing ridings, and key politicians are contradicting each other. According to reports published in Index on Tuesday afternoon, the Hungarian Socialist Party – Párbeszéd alliance (MSZP-P) decided to withdraw its candidate in Central Budapest in favour of Antal Csárdi of the Politics Can Be Different party (LMP), even though a poll conducted just days ago showed that Márta Naszályi was the most popular of all opposition candidates. Conventional wisdom would have it that Central Budapest (the city’s 1st electoral district) is a right-leaning swing district, particularly due to areas such as the Buda Castle, and as such, LMP is a more palatable choice than the Socialist Party to disenchanted Fidesz voters.

In exchange for this concession to LMP, Index reports that the small opposition party is withdrawing its candidate in Budapest’s 17th electoral district (Csepel-Soroksár) in favour of MSZP’s Ildikó Borbély (Mrs. Bangó). The democratic opposition currently holds this district, but is facing a challenge from one of the roughest and most prominent Fidesz politicians, Szilárd Németh–best known for his bullying and for rendering Parliament’s National Security Committee dysfunctional through a protracted Fidesz boycott. Szabolcs Szabó of Együtt beat Fidesz here in 2014 and is still in the running. As such, the Socialists and Együtt must come to an agreement in this district to ensure it is not captured by Fidesz.

According to the Index report, MSZP has also decided to withdraw its candidate in Budapest’s 6th electoral district (Gödöllő) in favour of Szilvia Lengyel of LMP, while the LMP candidate in the town of Szeged (Csongrád county’s 1st electoral district) is withdrawing in favour of Sándor Szabó of MSZP. In exchange for some of MSZP’s withdrawals, LMP is pulling its candidates in a number of additional electoral districts in favour of the Socialists–above and beyond those mentioned above.

Bernadett Szél of LMP confirms that the report of these negotiations is basically correct, but Gergely Karácsony of MSZP-P not only denies that any agreement has been reached, but even that negotiations have been unfolding. Is it possible that MSZP is, indeed, negotiating with LMP and that Mr. Karácsony, who is not a Socialist is not aware of this? I suspect that Hungarian opposition voters are getting mighty irritated.

Election signs for Mr. Karácsony and the MSZP-Párbeszéd supported independent candidate in Pécs.

It’s important to remember why Hungarian parties are forced to go through the misery of these negotiations at the riding level. Prior to adopting the new electoral system introduced by Fidesz, there were two rounds of voting. In the first round, each candidate would run at the electoral district level. If a single candidate won more than 50% of the votes in an electoral district, there would be no need for a second round. If no candidate won more than 50%, a second round would be held two weeks later among only those candidates who captured at least 15% of the vote. Usually, this left three candidates on the ballot.

Fidesz’s new electoral system forces disparate parties to withdraw in favour of the presumed strongest opposition candidate before any ballots are cast, while the old system required coordination only after the dust had settled following the first round–at which point the local power dynamics had become a lot clearer. Fidesz won the elections in 1998 in the second round, removing Gyula Horn’s Socialists from power, specifically because the Smallholders’ Party withdrew 82 candidates in favour of Fidesz between the first and second round. The current system heavily favours a party like Fidesz-KDNP, which has no political allies, but disadvantages a diverse and fractured opposition. And this is the essence of what Prime Minister Viktor Orbán calls the “centrális erőtér” or the central field of force. As long as the opposition includes a relatively strong Jobbik and several left-centre or liberal parties (which find it difficult to cooperate with the former), Fidesz has the upper-hand in the first-past-the-post system that it devised for the 106 ridings.

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Tactical Voting

Ádám Sanyó of a website that encourages tactical voting across the 106 ridings estimates that a turn-out of at least 70% and 500,000 tactical voters are needed to defeat Fidesz on 8 April. To put this into perspective, MSZP, then aligned with the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), scored a surprise victory against Fidesz in the 2002 elections when turn-out exceeded 70% in the first round and 73% in the second round. Though the power dynamics between the parties and the electoral system at the time bear absolutely no resemblance to what it is today, there is one common thread: in 2002, Fidesz ran a very aggressive and highly negative campaign, and by doing so it unwittingly mobilized opposition voters. In 2002, opinion polls failed to track this degree of mobilization among opposition voters. In 2018, Fidesz’s overtly threatening campaign (including a comment by Mr. Orbán on Good Friday about a state security list containing the names and personal information of 2,000 Hungarians considered to be “Soros operatives” and thus monitored by authorities) is like nothing seen in Hungary since 1989.

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Balázs, representing a regime change group of conservative and liberal intellectuals called V18, now estimates that the opposition has a realistic chance of winning in 53 electoral districts: MSZP could win 20, Jobbik in 16, the Democratic Coalition in 9, LMP in 4, Együtt in 2 and two independent candidates stand a chance of winning as well. Voters must cast ballots strategically in these districts. This is a more optimistic estimate than what V18 first offered, at the start of the campaign.

The “magic number” needed to push Fidesz into minority territory is 45. This is how many ridings the opposition must win.

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A new Republikon poll

I am sure many observers are wary of opinion polls, particularly after the opposition’s surprising win in Hódmezővásárhely’s mayoral election and very high levels of voters unwilling to disclose their voting intentions. But I feel compelled to share Republikon’s newest poll, published Tuesday–just five days before national elections. Republikon has Fidesz winning a majority (but not a two-thirds majority) on 8 April. Among decided voters, the party standings are as follows:

  • FIDESZ-KDNP: 49%
  • JOBBIK: 19%
  • MSZP-Párbeszéd: 17%
  • Democratic Coalition (DK): 5%
  • Politics Can Be Different (LMP): 4%
  • Együtt: 2%
  • Momentum: 2%

Fully 38% of respondents, however, claim to be undecided. This is an unusually high number less than a week before the vote. Republikon estimates that on voting day, party support will look a little different than the numbers published in the last poll, with Fidesz losing support compared to its 2014 results. This prediction is as follows:

  • FIDESZ-KDNP: 41%
  • JOBBIK: 21%
  • MSZP-P: 19%
  • DK: 6%
  • LMP: 6%

I get the feeling that perhaps more so than in any prior election, polls are increasingly stabs in the dark and must be taken with a hefty grain of salt. And this is not due to any failing on the part of Hungarian pollsters, but rather the unpredictability of between 600,000 and 900,000 Hungarians who, in an intense climate of fear, are not revealing their true intentions.

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*UPDATE*: After a short period of confusion, and about an hour after this article appeared, Gergely Karácsony confirmed that MSZP-Párbeszéd is willing to withdraw candidates in four electoral districts, including those listed in this piece, in support of the local LMP or Együtt candidate. In exchange, however, LMP and Együtt are expected to withdraw their candidate in favour of MSZP-P or DK in every other electoral district deemed winnable for the opposition. The parties will reportedly negotiate all night, so as to reach a final deal by Wednesday.

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