Recent local elections dealt a surprise blow to the ruling party of
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — but what are the long-
term implications? By Peter Kreko, Budapest
Hungary’s recent municipal elections brought surprising gains for
the opposition and created a stir in the international press as
commentators pondered if the result posed a real threat to Prime
Minister Viktor Orban’s power. It is not unusual in politics to see
everyone claiming victory on election night. But the contrast in
how the opposition and government assessed the results was
striking. Opposition forces talked about an “electoral
breakthrough” while politicians of Orban’s ruling Fidesz party
repeated the mantra that Fidesz remained the most popular party
by far in a country dominated by orange (the colour of Fidesz).
Who is right? In fact, both were.
Sex and the cities
The October 13 local elections were a kind of litmus test for the
opposition’s new strategy of joining forces to take on Fidesz —
and it worked surprisingly well. The opposition took Budapest by
a comfortable margin, winning 14 districts out of 20. They also
triumphed in 10 of Hungary’s 23 big cities and made a lot of
progress in municipal councils. The new opposition game plan
involved fielding joint candidates against Fidesz nominees,
resulting in a far less fragmented vote than ever before in a single-
round, first-past-the-post electoral system in which the winner
takes all. Calculations by the Political Capital Institute confirmed
(in Hungarian) that cooperation boosted opposition candidates’
chances. While the opposition had many successes in cities, they
scored no wins in municipalities where there was no joint
candidate. All in all, the opposition performed much better in
large cities than they did five years ago. Fidesz lost places of
symbolic importance, too, including several districts of the
capital’s traditionally right-leaning Buda side and big cities like
Miskolc, Szombathely and Pecs. This unexpected blow for Fidesz
prompted an internal blame game and intensified conflicts
simmering within the party. Especially galling for Fidesz was the
fact that the opposition pulled off its wins despite all the EU
money that has flooded into Hungary in the past five years. The
opposition also did well despite electoral irregularities designed
to tip the balance in Fidesz’s favour. So it seems that Fidesz's
teflon era is over. While the party has in the past been able to
weather major corruption scandals without losing voters, this
time was different. Online video footage of the Fidesz-backed
mayor of Gyor taking drugs and having sex with several women
on a yacht in Croatia may prove to be the scandal that changed the
game — meaning that any future scandals could hit the party
hard.

Supporters of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party attend a general election rally in
Szekesfehervar, 63 km southwest of Budapest, in April 2018. File photo: EPA-EFE/Zsolt
Szigetvary
Rural advantage
The story in the countryside, however, was different. While the
opposition made significant gains in big cities, in rural areas
Fidesz further consolidated its advantage. At the county level,
Fidesz increased its municipal councillors to 245 from 225 and
boosted its share of the vote coming from villages and smaller
cities to 57 per cent, compared with 52 per cent in 2014. Fidesz
strengthened its position in smaller settlements so the urban-
rural divide has become sharper. Roughly three million of
Hungary’s eight million voters live in Budapest or other big cities
where the opposition did well while the rest — five million —
dwell in rural areas where Fidesz is stronger than ever. This
shows that in a general election, Fidesz would still get a huge
majority, with a good chance of taking more than half the votes.
Psychological blow
The most important symbolic and psychological consequence of
the election is that the myth of the perfection of Fidesz and Orban
is over. The message is that the regime can be defeated. The
results are a personal blow for Orban, whose insistence that the
mayor of Gyor stay in the race despite the “sex and drugs” scandal
most likely had a negative impact on the party’s performance in
big cities. Moreover, Orban's personal charm did not translate into
political success this time. Most of the cities he visited during the
campaign were taken by the opposition. However, even if the
heterogeneous opposition forces cooperate with similar efficiency
in the future, they will still need to collect a lot of votes if they
want to beat Fidesz in a national election. And the opposition and
its newly elected mayors will have to walk through a minefield,
with Fidesz ever more alert to the dangers they pose. Orban
stressed on election night that Fidesz remained the strongest
party — and it will keep behaving as such. Over the next two-and-
a-half years before a general election, it is likely that Orban will try
to strengthen his grip on the media and other institutions to
prevent further gains by the opposition. The opposition has a
chance to develop, but it is not a given that they will live up to the
challenge. Conflicts between opposition parties that were
temporarily set aside could resurface. Meanwhile, the risk of
corruption grows as parties that have lacked resources for almost
a decade regain important positions. Some political entrepreneurs
want their share of the pie. While Orban pays lip service to
compromise, we can expect the opposite behind the scenes.
Conflicts will intensify between cities and a government that is
likely to squeeze municipalities dry to make it harder for them to
show voters they can offer a credible alternative to Fidesz. Expect
further restrictions on the rights of municipalities and the
withdrawal of some municipal funds by the government.
However, the psychological and symbolic impact of the
defeatability of Fidesz remains extremely important. While the
governmental proclaimed its huge success, Orban himself
lamented to Vladimir Putin about losing Budapest when the
Russian president recently visited the city. The fact that Fidesz can
be defeated sends an important message to the Western world
that Orban's rule will not last forever. It shows that there are
politicians beyond Orban, and that not everyone is happy with the
way Fidesz governs in Hungary. What has happened in Hungary
also has regional resonance, proving that cooperation between
(otherwise extremely heterogeneous) political forces can work
against illiberal politicians. And it could foster cooperation
between progressive mayors of Visegrad Four capitals as well.
There is also a lesson for the European Union. At the moment, EU
funds mostly go to national governments, allowing them to
distribute them between cities on political grounds. To stop such
potential “political blackmailing” of cities, EU institutions should
insist that the bloc’s next long-term budget, now being negotiated
for the period 2021-2027, allows more direct funding of
municipalities, circumventing national governments.
The article gives the views of the author, not the position of ‘Europe’s Futures
Ideas for Action’ project or the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).