Talk Elections

Here`s an early look at our neighbour's April 11 & 25 elections.

The brand-new Szonda Ipsos poll shows:

Fidesz (Nationalist Conservatives): 57% (+15% compared with 2006 elections)
MSZP (Socialists): 20% (-23%)
Jobbik (Nazis): 17% (+15%)
LMP (Greens): 3% (+3%)
MDF (Conservatives): 1% (-4%)
SZDSZ (Liberals): 1% (-6%)
Others: 1% (nc)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_parliamentary_election,_2010

What's the threshold?

5% and that`s why I´m hoping that the Socialists can gain a couple more points until the election to avoid Fidesz getting a constitution-changing 2/3 majority.

That's worrying.

wtf

Yeah, they even have their own SA-style militia.

Yeah, many working class people who voted for the Socialists are still quite pissed about former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány's "lies" and now they are switching to the Jobbik.

Also, Jobbik-leader Gábor Vona is one of the most trusted politicians right now in Hungary and I could also see them getting around 25% on election day, something we have seen ahead of the EU elections, where the Jobbik heavily underpolled compared with election day.

President Sólyom signs Holocaust denial bill

President Laszlo Solyom on Wednesday signed a recent law on penalising Holocaust denial, a senior official of the president's office, told MTI.

Solyom signed the law since it does not contravene the Constitution, said Ferenc Kumin.

At the same time, Solyom said that adopting the law amid the campaign for the April general election had been inappropriate.

Parliament approved on February 22 an amendment to the Penal Code under which denial of the Holocaust in public is punishable by up to three years imprisonment.

The Alliance of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) said in a statement that the approval of the law could be an important weapon in the fight against anti-Semitism and created the opportunity for the authorities to take action against groups posing a threat to a peaceful society.

The Hungarian anti-Fascist association (MEASZ) also welcomed Solyom's decision to sign the amendment to the penal code, while at the same time arguing that further amendments would be needed before human dignity is properly protected.

Main opposition party Fidesz said that it intended to draw up legislation after the general election which penalises sympathy expressed for the Nazi- and Communist-era crimes on equal terms, said MP Robert Repassy.

The Socialist-initiated amendment was adopted with 197 votes for, one against and 142 abstentions.

At the time, politicians supporting the legislation criticised deputies of the main opposition Fidesz for abstaining.

Leaders of the Jewish community Peter Feldmajer and Gusztav Zoltai as well as several Holocaust survivors attended the parliamentary session in which the law was passed, the last before the general election.

The bill was submitted by Attila Mesterhazy, prime minister candidate of the Socialist Party, on January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day. He said at the time that legislative action was required because anti-Semitism and extremist, neo-Nazi ideologies were on the rise in Hungary.

http://www.politics.hu/20100311/president-solyom-signs-holocaust-denial-bill

Allegations of marital infidelity hit Jobbik chairman

Rumors have started to swirl around the private life of Jobbik Chairman Gábor Vona after someone claiming to have hacked his Hungarian social networking site IWIW profile posted images from the account as well as personal communications online. Now Magyar Hírlap, which for a while flirted with the far-right before coming back to support Fidesz, is reporting that Vona may have had an extramarital affair with Mariann Pogácsás (seen here with Vona at presumably some Magyar Gárda event), and possibly with others. Jobbik denied the allegations on their official media site barikad.hu, calling them forgeries and part of a campaign to discredit Vona by the "Socialist-Fidesz grand coalition." What remains to be seen, however, is if this story gets some legs or quickly dies down.

http://www.politics.hu/20100310/allegations-of-marital-infidelity-hit-jobbik-chairman

MSZP has been polling crap since 2006 or so.

I'm just looking how much the polls underestimated them in the EU elections as well... makes you wonder how well they could do. :|

What are the chances of the Greens hitting the threshold?

It would certainly be something if Jobbik was the major opposition party.  :P  Miklos Horthy would be proud.

Austrians, rejoice! Whenever you are called 'racists' in the future you, at least, have an unbeatable comeback! Your neighbours to the east are objectively more racist than you, by far!

Slovakia also isn't much better. Fico is a left-leaning populist-fascist, and he's been providing a blank cheque to his openly fascist coalition partners to sprout their crap.

Well, in the most recent poll published today, the Jobbik has already overtaken the Socialist Party for the first time and at Median they are at about 20% right now ... :(

SzDSz and MDF....
Well, the post-1989 era is real history now.

We can already predict the result of the election after this one: a big win for the MSzP...

First round next Sunday

Poll by Szonda Ipsos, conducted between March 27 and April 2:

Fidesz 62% (+5% since last poll)
MSZP 20% (nc)
Jobbik 13% (-4%)
LMP 3% (nc)
MDF 1% (nc)
Others 1% (-1%)

The average of the final 7 polls before the elections:

Fidesz: 60%
MSZP: 17%
Jobbik: 13%
LMP: 5%
MDF: 2%
Others: 3%

In the more recent polls, the Greens are now consistantly above the 5% treshold.

I think you will also have to add about 5-10% more to Jobbik on election day, because in the telephone polls Nazis don`t declare to the pollster that they are Nazis, but in the voting booth they do. Fidesz on the other hand should go down to about 55%, because of Jobbik.

3 seat predictions on April 7:

Nézőpont Intézet:
Fidesz 284 (74%)
MSZP 50 (13%)
Jobbik 37 (10%)
LMP-Greens 15 (4%)

Republikon Intézet:
Fidesz 267 (70%)
MSZP 62 (16%)
Jobbik 47 (12%)
LMP-Greens 10 (3%)

Medián:
Fidesz 275 (71%)
MSZP 51 (13%)
Jobbik 50 (13%)
LMP 10 (3%)

Not sure how good these thingee whingees are, given Hungary's absurdly complex system mixing list PR, French-like two-round constituencies and a bunch of other stuff.

The two "old" parties from the early post-communist years, the liberal SzDSz and conservative MDF would be eliminated, first time, afaik, since 1990 o/c.

It's properly abbreviated SZDSZ, FWIW.

SZDSZ stands for Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége, so SzDSz is the most correct way (like PdL is the correct way to abbreviate Il Popolo della Liberta in Italy).

Centre-Right seen scoring big win in Hungary vote

BUDAPEST, April 11 (Reuters) - Hungarians vote on Sunday in an election centre-right Fidesz is expected to win by a landslide to oust the Socialists after eight years and secure a strong mandate to try to lift the economy out of recession.

The latest opinion polls showed Fidesz had 60-63 percent support among decided voters, putting it in a strong position to possibly gain a two-thirds majority in the next parliament to push through structural reforms.

Fidesz has campaigned on cutting taxes, creating jobs, and curbing red-tape and corruption, while supporting local firms.

"With a two-thirds majority Fidesz can change the constitution and therefore rewrite election rules and reshape the local political/administration system," Eurasia Group said in a note.

"A rapid reform push (starting in June/July) is exactly what market participants, the IMF, and the EU want and expect to see."

 The Socialists and far-right party Jobbik are seen running neck and neck in the vote, with the latest Median poll giving them both 17 percent among decided voters.

Nationalist Jobbik, which has capitalised on public anger over economic hardship and antagonism towards the Roma minority, may end up as the second biggest parliamentary force and some analysts said significant gains by Jobbik could cause unease among investors.

Deep reforms to downsize Hungary's local government sector and make its health care system and education more efficient are seen as paramount to Hungary's long term growth potential and the economy's competitiveness.

The country's economy contracted by 6.3 percent last year, while unemployment is running at 11.4 percent -- the highest since 1994 -- which has further increased public discontent over the past Socialist governments' spending cuts and tax hikes.

The last Socialist government led by technocrat Gordon Bajnai since April 2009 had to make painful budget cuts to keep the budget deficit at 4 percent of gross domestic product under a financing deal led by the International Monetary Fund.

The cuts helped stabilise Hungary's finances and regain investors' confidence but exacerbated the recession.

Many Hungarians now feel disappointed and no better off than 20 years ago, just after the communist regime collapsed.

"We need to fix what this (Socialist) government screwed up. The economy has tanked. We will vote for Fidesz, we believe they keep young people and entrepreneurs in mind," said Erika Aufmuth, 35, an entrepreneur.

"In the current political structure ... one must chose between bad and worse. I will still vote, not for something but against the last eight years (of Socialist rule)," said Fanni Sarkozy, 29, a pianist.

The fourth party seen winning enough support to get into parliament is the green liberal LMP.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6390CS20100410

My prediction:

Fidesz: 54%   
Jobbik: 19%
MSZP: 18%
LMP: 5%
MDF: 3%
Others: 1%

Turnout: 61%

Turnout reports and results can be found here:

http://www.valasztas.hu/en/parval2010/306/306_0_index.html

http://www.valasztas.hu/en/parval2010/298/298_0_index.html

So the quasi-fascists with a majority, the outright fascists in second place, and 73% between both of them. That is insanely scary.

Um... 'centre right' Fidesz are most definately not...

Turnout @ 1pm:

35.88% (-2.34% compared with 2006 elections)

I have to make a slight change to my turnout prediction, because I used 2nd round data of 2006 for my prediction, not 1st round data. 1st round turnout was about 4% higher than in the 2nd round.

Therefore I predict 65% turnout for today.

Turnout @ 3pm:

46.78% (-2.11%)

Turnout in regions where Jobbik performed well in the 2009 EP elections is flat compared with 2006, while turnout in pro-Fidesz areas is down by some 2-3% and turnout in strong Socialist areas like Budapest is down by about 5%.

SZDSZ themselves abbreviate it as 'SZDSZ' on their web site, not 'SzDSz'. However, if you use SzDSz, you should also write 'MSZP' as 'MSzP' since it stands for Magyar Szocialista Párt.

Various exit polls predict the following:

Fidesz: 54-57%
MSZP: 19-20%
Jobbik: 15-17%
Greens: 5-6%
MDF: 3-4%

Don`t know though how good Hungarian exit polls are ...

Hungarian national television now gives as results (if I interpret it correctly with 99.1% counted):

Fidesz-KDNP - 52.77% / 206 seats
MSZP - 19.30%  / 28 seats
Jobbik - 16.71% / 26 seats
LMP - 7.42% / 5 seats
MDF - 2.65% / 0 seats

Total: 265 seats.

All results can be found here:

http://index.hu/belfold/2010/valasztas/eredmenyek/egyeni/ (http://index.hu/belfold/2010/valasztas/eredmenyek/egyeni/)

There will be some runoffs in single-member seats in a few weeks, but I haven't checked all of those but it appears that Fidesz already has a 45-49% ground there. MSZP might manage to save a few seats in Budapest.

also, lol at Reuters at calling Fidesz centre-right. They're a bunch of opportunists with no platform except empty populism, and light nationalism. In fact, Fidesz said outright that it didn't promise anything this year. It basically ran on platitudes such as "we'll put crooks in jail, trust us" and "we'll create a million jobs, trust us" and won, but given the climate and how people still member that dirty scumbag Gyurcsány and his lies in 2006...  not too surprising.

This is an immensely depressing result. I suppose it could have been worse... a lot worse. And nearly was.

Oh, and the MSzP did actually managed to lead in two Budapest constituencies; 19 and 20. If the boundaries on Adam Carr's site are still in use, they're just to the north of the city centre. Wonder what the runoffs will bring.

From a look at The Google, seems to be filled with Soviet-era ugly apartment buildings and a large railroad depot of some sort.

So, if I'm reading this right, they'll have ~80% of the seats?

Remember, there's a runoff (and I think the 58 national seats to equalize differences between the single-member result and PV).

Oh, yeah, confused them. My bad.

It seems that Fidesz has won every constituency that was already decided in the 1st round.

They also lead in every constituency, except Budapest-13, when it comes to the run-off.

Results of Heves-03:

József Balázs (Fidesz): 39.3%
Magda Sándor (Socialists): 28.3%
Gábor Vona (Jobbik-leader): 26.1%
Lukács Zoltán (Greens): 6.3%

Not the best result for the Jobbik-leader, a few other Jobbik candidates managed to get about 31%.

Yes. The 58 national seats can only be allocated after all the single-member results are known.

Budapest 19 and 20 have MSZP leads by the first round.

I´ve read the wrong column.

Budapest 20 is the only district with a MSZP lead (45-36).

In Budapest 19, the Fidesz candidate Péter Szalay is ahead of the MSZP candidate by 38-37.

http://www.valasztas.hu/dyn/pv10/outroot/vdin1/en/ejk0119.htm

Runoff was today.

Turnout seems very low (50ish)

results with 92.67% in:

Fidesz 263
MSZP 59
Jobbik 47
LMP 16

ok, so:

first round seats total:

Fidesz and allies 119 district, 87 list
MSZP 28 list
Jobbik 26 list
LMP 5 list

districts:

Fidesz and allies 173 (so 54 won in the runoff)
MSZP 2
Indies 1

National lists: Fidesz 3; Jobbik 21; LMP 11; MSZP 29
Regional lists: Fidesz 87; Jobbik 26; LMP 5; MSZP 28 (allocated R1)

Results:

Fidesz 263 (173 DS, 87 RL, 3 NL)
MSZP 59 (2 DS, 28 RL, 29 NL)
Jobbik 47 (0 DS, 26 RL, 21 NL)
LMP 16 (0 DS, 5 RL, 11 NL)
Independent 1 (1 DS, 0 RL, 0 NL)

Two-thirds majority line is 258.

Turnout at 17:30 was 41.89%, so turnout overall will be below 50%. But I think constituencies filled in the first round (which didn't vote today) count in their calculations, since it seems that turnout is up a lot in constituencies with a runoff, meaning that real turnout is heavier today. The results by constituency show that Jobbik's vote declined quasi-universally, sometimes by a big amount, over the first round, likely due to Jobbik voters staying home knowing that their party had no hope in the district seats and a pickup in turnout on the left, the MSZP doing a bit better than two weeks ago overall.