The 2022 Hungarian Elections: Orbán Renewal

On 3 April 2022, Hungary held scheduled parliamentary elections for the unicameral 199--seat National Assembly (Országgyűlés) which resulted in an overwhelming victory for incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. The ruling party secured a supermajority of 135 seats with just over half of the vote (53.1%) on a turnout of nearly 70%. Alongside the election, there was also a referendum held on proposed legislation that would limit schools' teaching of homosexuality and transgender issues, which has been criticised as contravening European values and of equating homosexuality with paedophilia. While turnout for the general election was 70%, the turnout for the referendum failed to reach the 50% threshold necessary for it to be valid, but a majority of those votes counted supported the motion.  

Before the election, the conservative Fidesz government under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held 133 seats and Orbán, in office since 2010, is now the longest serving head of government in the EU. The opposition in the last legislature was made up of several parties including: the right-wing Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom); the Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt MSZP); the green-leaning Politics Can be Different (Magyarország Zöld Pártja LMP) party; the centre-left Democratic Coalition (Demokratikus Koalíció DK); the green Párbeszéd (Dialogue) party, the since dissolved left-wing Együtt (Together-Party); and one seat was held by the National Self-Goverment of Germans in Hungary, loosely aligned with Fidesz.

Hungarian Politics in Brief

Hungary has a unicameral parliamentary system consisting of 199 elected representatives elected for a fixed four-year term to the National Assembly (Országgyűlés). MPs are appointed via two parallel systems; 106 MPs are elected in single-member constituencies under a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system and 93 MPs are elected as part of a nationwide constituency which uses a closed-list proportional representation system. Notably, under the current system, the proportional seats are not allocated in an entirely proportional manner, as the surplus votes of successful candidates and all those of the losers in the constituencies where FPTP is used are added to the party list vote totals, which tends to be to the advantage of the largest party, currently Fidesz. Parties must also reach a threshold of 5% of the popular vote in order to enter parliament, rising to 10% for alliances of two parties, and 15% for alliances of three or more parties. Those parties registered as representing Hungary’s 13 recognised national ethnic minorities are exempt from this threshold.

This system means that a party which gains just over half of the vote can receive over two-thirds of seats in parliament, as Fidesz has done since 2010. Governments in this position are able to unilaterally change the constitution, which Fidesz has done nine times since 2010, although a two-thirds majority provision is not unusual for EU Member States. Under this system, Orbán’s government has been accused of redrawing electoral boundaries across the country in such a way as to dilute the parliamentary representation of opposition parties. Organisations including the OSCE and Transparency International have accused the Fidesz government of facilitating disproportionate and unbalanced media coverage in the party’s favour, of deliberately undermining independent bodies like the judiciary and state broadcaster, and of tolerating parties exceeding legal campaign finance limits, alongside a range of other abuses relating to the electoral system.

War and Peace

The recent election took place against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The countries share a 137km-long land border and tensions have long existed between Budapest and Kyiv over the status of the Hungarian language in Ukraine given the approximately 150,000 ethnic Hungarian minority in the country. Hungary has used the language dispute to thwart Ukrainian ambitions to join NATO and Prime Minister Orbán and Russian President Putin have also long shared close ties.

The tone for the election was also partly set by the ongoing tense relations between the Hungarian Government and the European Commission over the rule of law in the country.  This followed the dismissal by the European Court of Justice on 16 February 2022 of appeals by Hungary and Poland contesting the proceedings brought against the countries by the Commission under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. This mechanism ultimately authorises the Commission to stop EU funding in the event of democratic backsliding or the erosion of the rule of law in EU Member States. However, the apparent unwillingness of the Commission to use this tool ahead of the election to avoid the perception of political interference in advance of the election, and in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, may have lessened the mechanism’s effectiveness. The European Commission has however now initiated the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation following the election results.

Prime Minister Orbán’s close ties with Russian President Putin have strained Budapest’s relations with traditionally close allies in the Visegrád group of countries (i.e. Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia). This has further isolated Hungary within the EU alongside the ongoing rule of law dispute with Brussels. In contrast, the Fidesz government have cultivated close ties with countries in the Western Balkans, particularly Serbia. The extension of voting rights to ethnic Hungarians abroad has also increased Hungary’s influence and reach across central and eastern Europe, including in the likes of Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. The election was also influenced by the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, given that Hungary recorded the EU’s second highest adjusted-death toll from the virus, alongside demands for economic recovery funds due to steep inflation amid supply-chain shortages, budget deficits and energy spikes, with 8.3% inflation recorded in the country in February 2022.

A noteworthy aspect of the recent election was the relative reversal of the previous fragmentation of the Hungarian political landscape. In December 2020, opposition parties met and agreed to hold a primary election to select a common prime ministerial candidate, and to agree a single party list and shared manifesto for the 2022 election. In October 2021, Péter Márki-Zay, the independent conservative pro-EU mayor of the city of Hódmezővásárhely, won the opposition primary against centre-left Klára Dobrev MEP. At the same time, the far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) (MH) party was formed to contest the election on behalf of those who had split from Jobbik in opposition to the party’s process of (relative) political moderation The joke Two-Tailed Dog Party (Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt MKKP) also refused to join the opposition alliance.

Results & Analysis 

69.54% of the 7,536,306 eligible voters, excluding registered voters living abroad, turned out to vote. This was down slightly on the previous election in 2018 which had a 70.22% turnout. The outcome of the election was somewhat unexpected by both sides during the campaign, where the government exceeded expectations, while the opposition underperformed what opinion polls had earlier indicated.

Table 1. Election Results

Party	No. of Seats - 2022	No. of Seats – 2018	Change Up/Down
Fidesz	135	133	+2
United for Hungary (Jobbik, MSZP, LMP, DK, MM, MMM, Párbeszéd)	57	N/A	-9 (Compared to previous opposition total)
MKKP (Two-Tailed Dog Party)	0	0	-
Mí Hazánk (MH)	7	0	+7
National Self-Government of Germans in Hungary	1	1	-

Table 2. Election Results Within the United for Hungary Opposition Grouping

United for Hungary Individual Opposition Parties	No. of Seats - 2022	No. of Seats – 2018	Change Up/Down
Jobbik	9	26	-17
Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP)	8	20	-12
Politics Can be Different (LMP)	4	8	-4
Democratic Coalition (DK)	17	9	+8
Momentum Movement (MM)	9	0	+9
Everybody’s Hungary Movement (MMM)	0	0	-
Párbeszéd (Dialogue)	6	0	+6
Total	57	63	-6

 

Fidesz Resurgent

While they may have only slightly increased their seat and vote share, Fidesz were clearly the big winners of this election. The party has consolidated its supermajority and have secured another four years of government. Their poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic pressures of inflation had initially placed considerable pressure on the party, evidenced by losses in the 2019 municipal elections. However, the outbreak of war in Ukraine seems to have stabilised support for the incumbents while the opposition’s unwieldly six party coalition and little-known candidate for prime minister failed to present any real threat to Orbán’s government.     

While the Russian invasion did highlight the close links that exist between Budapest and Moscow, the conflict was successfully framed by the Government as something that Hungary should steer clear of to save Hungarian lives. The government also continues to speak out against EU sanctions on Russian oil and gas in a bid to ‘avoid further economic turmoil'. The war in Ukraine also saw the Fidesz Government benefitting from a strong “rally around the flag” sentiment with Prime Minister Orbán promising stability and continuity amid the turmoil on the country’s doorstep. This was marked in the Prime Minister’s speech delivered in Budapest on 16 March 2022, the 174^th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, where he framed the election as a choice between peace under Fidesz, or war and chaos if the opposition coalition were to enter government. Here, Orbán stressed that, “we shall not send soldiers or weapons to the combat zones.”

The Opposition Misses the Mark

The main losers in this election were the United for Hungary opposition. Despite running as a single list, the opposition as a whole had their worst ever result, polling at 34.89% and losing nine seats compared to 2018. They suffered from a free, but unbalanced campaign where the Government had significantly more resources and media coverage. Márki-Záy’s presentation of the opposition manifesto received  five minutes of state TV coverage during the entire campaign, and Fidesz put up over 20,000 election posters throughout the country compared to 2,000 for the opposition, despite nominally equal and binding spending caps.

Jobbik suffered a particularly poor result after shifting from their far-right origins and joining the opposition, losing 17 of their 26 seats.  This is partly due to former supporters defecting to either the far-right Mi Hazánk party, who came to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as a vaccine-sceptic party, or to Fidesz. The siphoning of opposition votes to Mí Hazánk and the spoiler joke Two-Tailed Dog party further fractures the opposition and entrenches the central bulwark of Fidesz in Hungarian politics.

Another feature of the recent election was the binary nature of the campaign, with Viktor Orbán on one side and the leader of the united opposition, Péter Márki-Zay, who explicitly framed himself as the “anti-Orbán” candidate, on the other. While the failure of the opposition can be traced to several factors, perhaps most notably, Márki-Zay was not a strong attraction. He was an unexpected winner of the opposition primary and did not have a national profile in advance of the campaign, an issue which was exacerbated by the unbalanced media coverage. As an independent candidate, Márki-Zay was not formally part of the united opposition and his victory caused political friction within the alliance which weakened the broad collection of unlikely bedfellows in the face of a more cohesive Fidesz operation. Márki-Zay was not widely viewed as a strong leader who could defend Hungary’s interests. Finally, the deliberate association between Márki-Zay with the politically divisive former prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, further undermined his popular support.

Other Themes: Unequal, Unfair, Unbalanced and Unopposed

The electoral results also underscore a strong urban-rural divide in Hungary, where 16 of 18 constituencies in the capital Budapest elected opposition candidates while Fidesz dominated the vote in the rest of the country.

With a reinforced mandate, the Fidesz government will likely continue to consolidate their control over public and private entities which will be further enabled by a weak and fragmented opposition. Indeed, the United for Hungary opposition has already descended into infighting and scapegoating as the leaders of the different entities allocate blame for their poor performance. The Russia-Ukraine war may also increase the salience and influence of the EU and NATO in Hungarian politics. Popular Fidesz policies to support pensioners and pro-natalist policies for young families will likely continue, though questions may arise regarding their long-term viability in the context of soaring inflation, emigration of skilled professionals and exponential increases in state deficit spending.

Budapest vs. Brussels

On 5 April 2022, at a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, European Commission President von der Leyen indicated that they would trigger Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation’s possible violation of  European values, with a notification letter to be sent to Budapest. This process could take several months to come into effect however as the Commission must first officially trigger the mechanism, after which point Hungary would have up to three months to respond. This would be followed by another month during which time the EU would draft the legislation to block funding, which Hungary would have another month to respond to. In the end, the Commission would have another month to submit its proposal to the European Council, which ultimately decides by qualified majority within a two-month window whether to trigger the mechanism. This means in essence that the earliest that sanctions could be introduced would be September 2022, and possibly as late as early 2023 (if at all) if Hungary contest the process, which is likely. The effective absence of a political alternative to Fidesz and the optics of the EU freezing funding to Hungary in the midst of an energy, migration and economic crisis stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war, may also reinforce Prime Minister Orbán’s bargaining power and appeal to this electorate. Hungary would have up to three months to respond.

Hungarian Isolation

Its strong support for Russia has rendered the Hungarian Government increasingly isolated within NATO and the EU, particularly amongst its erstwhile allies in the Visegrád group. A meeting of the group’s defence ministers was cancelled after the Czech and Polish representatives cited Budapest’s pro-Russian stance. In particular, the alliance with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość PiS), which is central to avoiding EU sanctions on Hungary, may be weakening. Polish President Duda explicitly criticised the Hungarian government’s close relationship with Russia saying that “This policy will be costly for Hungary, very costly.” Prime Minister Orbán has moderated his position on Russian sanctions since the result, but remains relatively neutral on the conflict. The fiercely pro-Fidesz support among ethnic Hungarians abroad and Orbán’s nationalist vision of a Greater Hungary, which incorporates sections of neighbouring Austria, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine into a nominal ‘Greater Hungary’, could further weaken relations and exacerbate the country’s isolation.

A Viktor at Home, but Orbán Decline Abroad

The resounding victory of Fidesz and Viktor Orbán will no doubt further fuel acrimonious relations between the European institutions and the Hungarian Government. As Prime Minister Orbán said in his victory speech, “We’ve won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, but you can certainly see it from Brussels”. While the illiberal regime may become increasingly entrenched within Hungary with a splintered opposition, the initiation of rule of law measures to freeze funding and the political and diplomatic isolation within NATO and the EU may eventually curb some of the Government’s illiberal and authoritarian tendencies. However, this move may also serve to further isolate Hungary within the EU and to push it to foster closer economic and political ties with regimes including Russia, China, and Serbia. After this election result Hungary’s potential as a trenchant voice within the EU remains but has been weakened somewhat by its stance in the Russia-Ukraine war. This relative political isolation of Budapest within the Union could open up room for measures to move forward on key European reforms on migration and defence policy, and to combat and contain illiberalism within the Union. While Fidesz’ position at home has been robustly reinforced, Hungary’s Government is increasingly isolated on the European stage.