First round of opposition primaries shifted consensus towards a centre-left, pro-European stance

HUNGARY - In Brief 30 Sep 2021 by Istvan Racz
The first round of the opposition alliance's primary election ended the day before yesterday, and partial results are available now.The first round was about the election of joint candidates for all of parliament's 106 constituencies and the selection of the united opposition's joint candidate for prime minister for the parliamentary election of April 2022. MP candidates are to be decided about by this single vote, whereas there will be a second round for the selection of the prime ministerial candidate if none of the five names running for the position has reached absolute majority in the first round.The first round, held between September 18-28, was a success, as 634 thousand voters participated. This was an unexpectedly high number, especially as this was the first time primary elections were held in Hungary. Logistics also worked well, despite some initial problems with the supporting IT system.Based on the results of the count in 55 voting constituencies (a bit more than half of the total), Klára Dobrev of the heavily pro-European, centre-left Demokratikus Koalíció (DK) emerged on top with 34% of the vote, followed by Gergely Karácsony, the leftist liberal Budapest mayor, with 28%, and Péter Márky-Zay, a non-party mayor of a smaller town, a moderate right-wing catholic, father of 7, heavily pro-European, a determined democrat, to a great extent the mastermind behind the organisation of the opposition primary vote. The leader of the radical right-wing Jobbik and the head of Momentum, the latter representing mainly university students came out fourth and fifth, Jobbik's candidate doing markedly below expectation.So far, it looks like DK will take the biggest share o...

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