Viktor Orbán’s main concern in April 2018 may not be whether or not he wins a two-thirds majority in parliament, but rather if he can avoid the bad optics of having a veritable one party legislature after next year’s national elections. Medián, one of Hungary’s most prominent polling firms, has Fidesz at 61% support among decided voters–up four percentage points in a single month and the best score for the ruling party since 2011. Jobbik, the country’s second largest party, stands at an extremely distant 14%, while every left-wing or liberal party is now below 10%. The Hungarian Socialist Party is at 9%, former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s Democratic Coalition is up slightly after capitalizing on MSZP’s collapse with 7% support and the Politics Can Be Different party (LMP) stagnates at 5%. No other party comes even close to reaching the minimum 5% threshold for parliamentary representation. Thirty percent of respondents are undecided. In reality, most of them have checked out of politics and are unlikely to vote.
What do these numbers mean for Hungary’s next parliament? When it comes to votes for party lists, the situation is fairly simple: with Medián’s numbers, Fidesz would garner around two-thirds of the 93 seats distributed through party lists. That’s around 57 or 58 seats. Predicting the distribution of the 106 single constituency ridings is more complicated. But the Váradi András Foundation produced a prediction earlier this fall, based on numbers that were actually more positive for the opposition than Medián’s most recent poll. Assuming no electoral cooperation between the small LMP, Momentum, Párbeszéd and Együtt parties, and with Fidesz garnering nearly 20% percent less in the popular party list vote than what Medián reported in today’s poll, the prediction was for Fidesz to win 105 out of 106 ridings, with 1 riding going to MSZP.
Going by this, Fidesz is likely to control 163 out of 199 seats, representing a solid three-fourths majority in parliament. This is also in line with a poll last week from Tárki. This represents a significant improvement over the 133 seats that Fidesz won in the 2014 elections.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is all smiles in this photo taken on October 30th, 2017, at the inauguration of a sugar refinery.
Hungary and Hungarian society is prone to conspiracy theories–one of which is the belief that it is in Fidesz’s interest to keep the current left-centre opposition on life support in its present, decrepit form. These parties are harmless, are heading nowhere, but maintain the window dressing of a multi-party democracy.
What a sweet photo. So refined. 🙂 De Tocqueville would have loved it. It’s icing sugar on his cake about the tendency of Democracies to degenerate into Dictatorships of the majority. Orbán is Central Europe’s most accomplished practitioner of affinity fraud, and alas, the citizens of Hungary are lapping it up, like the refined sugar, coming out of that factory somewhere on the Great Hungarian Plain.
Or perhaps the average Hungarian still remembers the after-effects of the 2002-2010 economic disaster inflicted on them by the left, while they are looking at Hungary as having stabilized 2010-2012 and having seen growth in GDP and real wages since then, far outpacing EU average, therefore converging. All this while debt deleveraging continues, therefore Hungary’s economic vital signs continue to improve. Perhaps you should just continue chanting “mafia state”, “mafia state”, “mafia state”, while jumping on the bandwagon every time outside interests tend to attack Hungary’s interests. Latest polls suggest that it is really working out very well for the left opposition. This is the real reason why Orban is popular, while appetite for the left keeps declining.
There are two reasons for it. One is that people support Orban’s migrant policies, and the second is that the economy is healthy despite attempts to portray it as terrible by some. As look at the economy does good, Fidesz support will remain between 45-60%. There is no sign the economy will falter. The next 2-yrs at least, the economy is expected to accelerate. What happens after the next 2-yrs, who knows, but at the moment, the economy is performing better than ever before. The same is in Poland, where support for the governing party is also at a record high. Both countries are experiencing what amounts to a once in a lifetime economic miracle.
Peter, saying this on your way out of the sugar factory?
Sugar factories, car factories, banks, stores, construction, bottom line is that there are now more jobs than there were at any point for the past two decades, at least. And wages are currently increasing at double digit rates, which given the stable forint, it means that in Euro terms those double digit rates apply as well. At to this the fact that there are no ME-African colonists being settled into Hungary, so native culture is safe, and I’d say there are enough reasons for Hungarians to opt for more of the same.
@ Peter and Opinion
These claims of responsibility for the strong performance of the Polish or Hungarian economies by the current autocrats ruling those states are as false as Trump’s claim to have turned around the US economy in the past 6 months.
Obama resuscitated the US economy after it was virtually drowned by his Republican predecessor. He is the architect of the current economic miracle, on whose coattail the Orangeman is taking us to a showdown with Rocket Man.
The Polish economy has been on fire for years, before the current Autocracy gained a foothold. The major economic indicators of Hungary between 2002-2010 were better before Orbán came to power than after 2010. This is the first good year for Orbán on the GDP front. But if that is your sole measure of success, why not reintroduce Nazism, it outperformed all of Western Europe during its rise to power.
Trolls – don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
Actually, funny that you should mention Obama, because I see a lot of parallels between him and Orban. Obama inherited an economy in shambles in 2009, same as Orban in 2010. Republicans blamed the continued after-effects on Obama in the 2009-2012 period, same as you guys did with Orban as life in Hungary continued to suck in the aftermath of the disaster that the previous government inflicted on Hungary. Same as Obama, Orban produced a sustainable economic recovery, with the forint stable since 2014, economic growth averaging more than double EU pace since 2013. Continuing debt deleveraging at government and consumer level, with total debt declining as a percentage of GDP, while the toxic FX debt has been greatly reduced. Unemployment is down significantly, wages rising significantly.
Question: – why is everyone who has a different opinion that yours is defined as a troll?
Because Mr “Intellectual” does not tolerate opinions or the presentation of facts that do not agree with his world-view. Ironic that he refers to Hungary as “autocratic”. Evidently, we should all conform to servitude to one ideology, namely his own, or face personal attacks.
Peter and the other trolls are doing exactly what the Orban regime is doing in Hungary, has always been doing: repeat a bunch of lies 1000 times until they become “truths”.
– Orban is running a “fascist light” regime.
– The Hun economy and currency are kept afloat by the EU cohesion and agri funding amounting to 4-6% GDP and the German auto manufacturers.
– It’s been slipping behind all EEuro countries, productivity, competitiveness, innovation and investment as well.
– Orban is the OECD champion in corruption with his mafia state project.
Evidently, as many as 2/3 of those who will vote next year, disagree with you and your narrative.
Mr. “Troll” (aka Peter),
You like to answer your own questions ? I thought that was strictly for losers. Here is one, to get your teeth into. What do you get if you take the “F” out of “Bread” ? It certainly foxed your colleague Morrison. Maybe you need a better teacher down at the Orbán Troll Farm, no ?