Hungary's first "double election" took place on the ninth of June 2024. Hungarian voters were able to vote in the European Parliament and the municipal elections at the same time. For the past 14 years, most elections have been followed by a similar process: Fidesz-KDNP won big, which resulted in a strengthening of the government parties in post-election opinion polls (a phenomenon we call bandwagon-effect), while opposition voters and opposition politicians, disappointed, took advantage of the summer or winter break to rethink their approach to Hungarian politics. The 2024 double election, however, brought innovations in many ways. On the one hand, there was an awkward transition period of several months between the winning of local government seats and the winners taking office, giving the losers a chance to spend their remaining resources at the last minute and the winners a chance to organise and prepare. On the other hand, it is not clear who won this election. Of course, Fidesz-KDNP won the most votes and the most seats in the EP, so they are again the winners in terms of numbers, but in proportional terms they have had their lowest percentage since we joined the EU and have never won so few seats. Meanwhile, the Tisza Party (Respect and Justice Party), which has come from nowhere, is less than 10 percentage points behind the weakened Fidesz-KDNP, with almost 30% of the vote in just a few months. Tisza's squeeze has also weakened the classical opposition parties, with the DK-MSZP-Párbeszéd alliance is in significant decline, Momentum and the Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP) failing to enter the European Parliament, LMP and Jobbik virtually wiped out, and 2RK, MMN and MEMO parties failing to gain a foothold at all.
Post-election opinion polls showed that the Fidesz-KDNP victory was not clear-cut for voters either. The usual pull to victory failed to materialise, with Republikon's summer party preference data showing that the governing parties even suffered a minimal loss, while the Tisza Party gained strenght within the margin of error.
Republikon conducted a representative survey among the adult population of Hungary, examining how voters of each party assessed the election results and what kind of voter migration started after the election.
Read the full analysis via this link.