Fidesz still holds the lead in the election race, polls suggest

HUNGARY - In Brief 30 Mar 2022 by Istvan Racz

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Four days before election day, Medián Opinion and Market Research measured 40% support for Fidesz and only 32% support for the united opposition. As the local electoral law typically rewards the winner, this result can be translated into a 128 to 71 win for Fidesz, in terms of the parliamentary seats won by the two big forces, meaning a 64% to 36% win for Fidesz, with none of the small parties acquiring any seat, according to Medián.As it happens, Medián is known as an independent and reasonably credible pollster domestically, and yet this firm tends to predict the biggest wins for Fidesz, even bigger than Nézőpont, Fidesz's own market research institute. This latest result implies a marginal improvement for Fidesz, as compared to Medián's previous survey. We think that Medián's result needs to be taken seriously, but only as one end of the existing range of election forecasts, i.e. the one most favourable for the governing party. Even this result suggests that Fidesz will not acquire a two-thirds (constitutional) majority, despite getting relatively close to it.Another pollster, Závecz Research, whose name we mentioned the other day, has published a new survey, according to which Fidesz led the race with 39% support against 36% held by the united opposition. This also marked some further improvement for Fidesz. Analysts seem to largely agree that Fidesz has been gaining lately because its stand on the war, meaning Hungary's neutral position, is well received by the local electorate, which is very well possible in our view.By the way, Fidesz is actually pushing this pedal hard, among others by actively spreading a broad stream of allegedly fake news on the opposition w...