A few days ago, HVG published a detailed list of the opposition candidates, broken down by supporting parties, in all 106 electoral districts. A link attached to the article takes us to an impressive inventory of not only the names and party affiliations of the entrants in the primaries but also the results of the 2018 elections, including the winners with the margins of their victories. Thus, for example, we can ascertain at a glance that the winner in District 2 of the County of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén was György Hubay with a meager 38% of the votes. If we then visit the website of the Nemzeti Választási Iroda (National Electoral Office), we learn the details of how Hubay was able to win this district, which includes the city of Miskolc, with 38%. Actually, his job was easy. He won with 19,434 votes against MSZP’s László Varga (15,274 votes) and Jobbik’s Norbert Dudás (14,527). Thus, these two opposition candidates had a combined total of almost 30,000 votes. If the anti-Fidesz forces hadn’t split their votes between MSZP and Jobbik, today District 2 in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén wouldn’t have a Fidesz member of parliament.
Immediately before and after the election of 2018, András Bódis, an investigative journalist, published two articles in the since defunct Heti Válasz. In the first one, titled “Elections—We show where Fidesz has a strong challenger,” Bódis claimed that “thanks to tactical voters overriding the centrist force, Fidesz could have a strong challenger in two-thirds of the districts.”
What do we mean by tactical voting? The idea is to urge voters to vote for the most likely winner in the district, regardless of party affiliation. A voter’s party preference can be expressed by his vote on the party list. Based on data from the 2014 elections, Heti Válasz identified 36 Fidesz seats as unassailable, but Bódis predicted that Fidesz might be surprised in 29 constituencies. It didn’t work out that way. Yes, tactical voting was effective in several districts in Budapest, where the electorate understood its rationale, but outside of the capital, as our example of Miskolc and environs shows, it was not. In the end, in 2018, opposition candidates won in only 15 districts, 12 of which were in Budapest and one each in Baranya, Csongrád, and Fejér counties. That’s not a typo. Only 14% of opposition candidates won their individual races over Fidesz adversaries.
In the second article, titled “Half = Two Thirds,” Bódis pointed out that the “large-scale opinion poll, that is, the election, showed that half of the country did not vote for Fidesz, with the governing party candidate scoring below 50% in 53 places. So, in half of the districts there was a chance of an opposition victory.”
Although the nationwide statistics from 2018 were devastating for the opposition, in Budapest, out of the 18 electoral districts Fidesz won only six, and all of the winners were elected with under 50% of the votes. Some of them are leading lights of the party. So it is not surprising that, in view of the opposition’s strategy to run only a single candidate in each district this time around, Viktor Orbán pretty much decided to put up less prominent Fidesz leaders in these Budapest districts. For instance, Mihály Varga, minister of finance who currently represents the second district and the neighboring part of Óbuda, won with 41.82% against candidates from five opposition parties. Now, in place of Varga, Orbán chose a sacrificial lamb for the district, a simple council member from District II.
The situation is quite similar in District 3, where Gergely Gulyás won with 43% against DK, LMP, Jobbik, MKKP (the two-tailed dog party), and Momentum. Gergely Gulyás considered Balázs Fürjes, undersecretary in the Prime Minister’s Office who is responsible for the development of Budapest, to be the best candidate, but so far Fürjes doesn’t seem to be eager to throw his hat in the ring.
In District 3, Balázs Fürjes or some other replacement for Gulyás will have to face Zoltán Komáromi (DK) or Miklós Hajnal (Momentum). The former is a politically active family doctor (háziorvos) who is a common participant in discussions of the pandemic and health issues in general. Miklós Hajnal is a member of the top leadership of Momentum, who is also very active in the media. Mihály Varga’s replacement will have to face either the very popular Olga Kálmán (DK) or Bence Tordai (MSZP-Párbeszéd). The replacement for Máté Kocsis (District 6), who received only 40% of the votes in 2018, will apparently be Botond Sára, formerly mayor of District VIII, not the most popular politician. This electoral district is one of the few where five candidates are running in the September primaries. According to Republikon Intézet, the independent András Jámbor, formerly editor-in-chief of the left-leaning news site Mérce, is leading the pack.
As it now stands, two women will be competing to be the opposition candidate in István Simicskó’s District 2. Since no announcement of his replacement has been made, it seems that he, with 42% of the votes in 2018, will have to face either Erzsébet Gy. Nagy (DK), currently deputy mayor of Budapest, or the young Anna Orosz (Momentum), a member of the city council and deputy mayor of District 11.
Two other Fidesz MPs from Budapest are less known: Kristóf Szatmáry of District 13 and Mónika Budai of District 14. Zoltán Vajda, a candidate of Mindenki Magyarországa Mozgalom, was Szatmáry’s very strong opponent in 2018, when, after some unfair practices, Szatmáry won with 43% against Vajda’s 39.96%, Jobbik’s 9.14%, and LMP’s 7.27%. If Vajda wins the nomination, which is likely, Szatmáry will have a difficult time. Mónika Budai, with her 41% win in District 14, is in no better position. In 2018, she faced four opponents: MSZP (37.23%), Jobbik (13.04%), and LMP (4.89%). Her most likely opponent will be the same Károly Lukoczky (MSZP), who would probably have won the district if the opposition forces hadn’t been so fragmented.
On the basis of these figures, I think we can safely predict a clean opposition sweep in Budapest in 2022. From some of the early announcements, it seems that Viktor Orbán has resigned himself to the loss of all 18 Budapest districts.
Here I have concentrated only on Budapest, where the opposition is strongest. But there are a fair number of districts outside the capital where Fidesz won with under 50% of the votes against multiple opponents. Naturally, there are pockets in the country where Fidesz dominance will undoubtedly be maintained. Currently, the common wisdom is that the opposition will need to win in 60 districts. A quick calculation indicates that this can be done, but, as a saying goes, between now and the day of the election “a lot of water will flow down the Danube.”
July 30, 2021
Blog posts by Eva S. Balogh also appear in Hungarian at https://ujnepszabadsag.com/