"We are worse off than four years ago!" – this was Fidesz's slogan for the 2006 parliamentary election campaign, at least according to their most memorable poster campaign. The slogan criticized the performance of the Medgyessy and Gyurcsány governments since 2002. Fidesz focused primarily on unemployment and price increases, the poor economic situation, and the cost-of-living crisis. It is an interesting historical parallel that in the same campaign, the ruling MSZP boasted about introducing one extra month of pension called the 13th month pension ("We did it!"), which the Fidesz faction initially criticized sharply. In the end, the "we are worse off" campaign was not enough to win the 2006 election, with the majority of voters placing their trust in the ruling parties and Ferenc Gyurcsány. Based on this, the "we are worse off" message did not resonate with voters' perception of the situation at the time (although this perception was complicated by the fact that the government was not sufficiently transparent about the state of the country). It is difficult to judge in hindsight whether we were "worse off" in 2006 than in 2002. EU accession and the promise of development may have given cause for hope, and we could note both positive and negative economic tendencies: public debt and the budget deficit increased, but inflation decreased and GDP grew steadily. We could keep listing the figures, but the point is that in 2006, Fidesz claimed that the situation of Hungarians had deteriorated under left-wing governments, while MSZP's campaign posited that they had successfully revitalized the country. Ahead of the 2026 elections, the cost-of-living is once again a key issue. The Fidesz-KDNP coalition has been trying to demonstrate its successes, but the economy is in a bad shape, about which even Fidesz is sometimes forced to talk openly. Over the past four years, Hungary has had the highest inflation rate in the EU, and GDP growth was 0 percent in the third quarter of 2025. The budget deficit has exceeded all expectations, and the real election handouts are only just beginning. We are in a bad position in terms of consumption, housing prices, wage levels, pension expenditure, health, education, and R&D expenditure, and the list goes on. The global economy has been struggling with successive crises in recent years, and the Hungarian economy has fared worse than most. Since the cost-of-living crisis is a central theme of the 2026 campaign, in Republikon's new survey1 we asked respondents to decide: are we worse off now than four years ago?
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