Medián poll has Fidesz at 61% support

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.

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