Hungary

Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orbán won his second consecutive term in a landside election last month. The governing Fidesz party managed to retain its absolute majority as the result of arguable new election laws and a highly inept opposition. Even more disturbingly Hungary’s infamous far-right Jobbik emerged as the second biggest party in the country.

The joint event of the Hungarian Free Market Foundation and Political Capital was searching for answers to the ever present questions such as: what is the program of the far-right, how certain far right groups in Europe differ, should the media give these parties a voice, what effective counter strategies exist and is it possible that these parties form a partnership in the EU parliament.

Since the transition, a number of national and international contrastive studies have noted a growing anti-capitalist sentiment in the Hungarian society.

Using the official election results and its own reasearch Republikon Instutite analyzed the results of the Hungarian national elections in 2014. In this article the most important findings are summed up regarding the turnout and the impact of the different elements of the new election system.

Besides the general turnout and results of the elections Republikon Institute took a deeper look into the performance of each parties as well, with special regard to the changes since 2010, the parties different performance in different regions and the phenomenon of fragment of ballots.

Republikon Institute used data available from Eurobarometer to construct three categories among voting-age population in Europe: eurosceptics, who are dissatisfied with Europe; “soft eurooptimists”, who, in general, are comfortable with the depth of European integration, and “federalists”, who would give more power to Brussels. The Institute then looked at the ratio of these categories in different countries – with a special focus on Central Eastern Europe.

From among the EU member-states, the Hungarian government used the most lenient approach to the Russian operations in Ukraine. The opposition parties’ immediate reactions to these events made the government party express its opinion too.

However, there are many who think that future challenges can only be faced by further enlargement and deepening of the European unification process.

The one-day-long event, held on 27 September in the conference room of Hotel Benczúr in Budapest, was connected with the European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism.

Project Parallel liberalisms, based on research by Republikon Institute, aims to define liberal voters of Hungary – who these liberal voters are and where they stand.