First reaction to yesterday's election: no great success for Fidesz

HUNGARY - In Brief 10 Jun 2024 by Istvan Racz

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To sum it up, Fidesz did relatively well in most respects, winning the European election in the Hungarian vote and keeping most of their positions at the local government elections, compared to the previous local elections in 2019, and even winning new positions here and there. But they have lost more than they gained, doing altogether worse than on previous occasions. The new opposition party Tisza did remarkably well, only two months after their appearance, taking a strong second place overall. The leftist (actually centrist-liberal left) opposition lost much, largely the same amount as Fidesz but out of much less initially, and the small rightist-liberal opposition parties, especially Momentum, were beaten into oblivion. All the support lost by Fidesz and their old opposition went to the new Tisza party, of course. The election process itself went in a very orderly way, free, peaceful and technical. The road to the elections was different though, with Fidesz relying on very much more of financial resources than the others, running a strange campaign, in which they had nothing to say about domestic affairs but quite a lot about the war, which is bound to engulf Hungary if people do not vote for Fidesz, as they claimed, flooding the whole country with related billboard posters, and also with some reported dubious techniques such as allegedly buying up votes in the poorest regions and moving voters between constituencies on tactical grounds. The opposition, in turn, relied very much on the internet, the importance of which has grown quite a lot lately, becoming the same important as television and radio, and very much more important than the written press.  In more det...