In recent years, the public life of many settlements along Lake Balaton has been organised around major investments in towns and villages. Just think of Balaland in Plovdiv, some of the projects in Tihany and Keszthely, or the Club Aliga port in Balatonvilágos. In many cases, just the news of these investments was enough to spark off a kind of civil resistance. In the local elections, the loss of Keszthely was a sensitive point for Fidesz, which had given the town a mayor since 1994, and now only 1 of the 8 single-member constituencies was won by a Fidesz candidate. Fidesz also suffered a symbolic defeat in Tihany, where neither the outgoing Fidesz mayor nor the candidate he supported could even get into the council. In this context, the latest analysis by Republikon examines how Fidesz performed in the EP elections, and to what extent the opposition parties managed to channel social discontent in Keszthely and other coastal settlements.
Main findings of the analysis:
- Lake Balaton has been one of the most popular destinations for the middle class wishing to move out of the cities in the last decade, but the economic elite, linked to the governing parties, also saw the potential in the lake's surroundings
- The settlements around Lake Balaton have been buzzing with news of scandalous investments in recent years, and in the local elections Fidesz lost the mayor's seat and control of the two symbolic settlements (Keszthely and Tihany)
- While in 2019, Fidesz performed better in Balaton than nationally, this year it performed slightly below its already weaker national result
- The number of voters for the governing party was roughly the same as five years ago, but turnout was significantly higher, and the party's decline was therefore higher in 34 lakeside settlements than nationally
- In 2019, turnout was also higher in the Balaton region than in the country, as it was this year, ultimately resulting in a relatively worse performance for Fidesz
- The Tisza Party alone won as many votes on the Balaton shore as the six parties that joined together in 2022 in the previous EP elections, with the parties of the coalition losing almost two-thirds of their voters
- Fidesz is still the largest party in the Balaton-coast municipalities, but while nationally they managed to increase their voter numbers despite the weaker results, the number of votes they received on the lakeshore decreased minimally.
Click here to read the full analysis!