To some extent, left-liberal Democratic Coalition (DK) has managed to break out of its traditional mould and attracted some younger voters, too, and this development shows in its polling figures, which have been topping the opposition ranking for a while now, at around 16-18% of likely voters. While the party remains solidly anchored in the personal appeal of former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány, it is working
on building a stronger party organisation, and when it comes to potential future leaders, it is his wife, MEP Klára Dobrev who is mentioned the most frequently. The old problem for DK, however, is that for a generation of voters, in particular those who came of age in the 2000s, the former PM remains an anathema. Time may have softened their opposition to Gyurcsány sufficiently to vote for a joint list on which he is running or to even vote for candidates affiliated with his party, but for that to work, he must accept a subordinated position within such a cooperation. In the past year, the former PM has exhibited a somewhat surprising willingness to tactically pull himself back into the background at pivotal moments.
The situation is different with Momentum, which remains safely established as the second strongest opposition party (with a support ranging between 9-11% of likely voters). Its ability to attract qualified young politicians is also its biggest asset going forward. Momentum has a wide variety of articulate spokespersons (MEPs Anna Donáth and Katalin Cseh appear especially a lot in the media), which leads to an interesting combination where the party’s leader, András Fekete-Győr, is in a strong and for now unassailable position as the Momentum chairman, but he does not attain this by crowding out competent potential rivals. Momentum has the strongest appeal in the young and middle-aged, liberal, urban intelligentsia that defines much of the media coverage about the opposition, but at the same time, it is also true that we do not know much yet about the party’s rural strength, which should be the key quality that sets any of the opposition parties apart from the rest.
After a precipitous drop in the polls, Jobbik has finally stabilised and it appears to be stagnating at a level that continues to make it a relevant player (between 8-10% of likely voters) but is a far cry from the leading role within the opposition the party occupied for years in the polls. Péter Jakab’s rise as the new chair has ended the leadership vacuum that was a major source of the drain on Jobbik’s public support, and his brutal purge of the party leadership has once again underlined that in Hungarian politics Viktor Orbán’s logic of power is pervasive far beyond Fidesz. Still, while Jakab’s charisma The Hungarian opposition in 2020
together for now, the party’s future is still in limbo. On the plus side, while former chairman Gábor Vona took years to warm to the idea of cooperating with the left – a result of his own political socialisation – Jakab has no such reservations, and under his leadership Jobbik’s commitment to a coordinated opposition effort in 2022 seems more solid than ever.
Similarly to Jobbik, the Socialists (MSZP) have also stabilised their support in 2020 (they stand at 7% at the end of 2020). Apart from its elderly voter base, the major asset of MSZP to the opposition coalition remains the same: their organizational strength has weakened over the years, but is still considerable, especially compared to their rivals’
in the opposition. This was clear at the local elections in 2019 as well, when the Socialists gained more mayoral seats and has now more influence in the municipal assemblies and in the town halls than one would have expected. In 2020, the Socialists amended the party’s rules to introduce male and female co-chairs. Following these changes, Ágnes Kunhalmi and Bertalan Tóth were elected as co-leaders of the party. Kunhalmi (MSZP’s most popular politician) used to be the head of the party’s national board while Tóth had led the
themselves to be the “best allies” of opposition cooperation and aim to promote social democratic policies in the joint programme of the opposition.
Along with MSZP, the only left-wing party with a parliamentary presence is Párbeszéd (Dialogue). Párbeszéd still suffers from the fact that even though several of its leading politicians are popular nationally – besides Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, co-chair Tímea Szabó and former MEP Benedek Jávor should be also mentioned – the party itself simply fails to climb in the polls (it stands at 2%). However, given that Karácsony leads Hungary’s capital city and is considered to have good chances at the opposition’s primary for the PM candidate position, if he decides to run, Párbeszéd is likely to be an influential player within the opposition cooperation in 2021. Fidesz is fully aware of the threat that successful mayors of the opposition parties may pose to their power in 2022. This explains why the Orbán government has decided to target the opposition-run municipalities over the last year and why Budapest Mayor Karácsony is the no 1. on Fidesz’s hit list.
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Under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic, the Hungarian government has been moving to reverse decree-by-decree the results of the municipal elections of autumn 2019, its first major electoral setback in nearly a decade and a half. Although Fidesz had definitely anticipated losing some major towns in October 2019, the magnitude of the opposition’s victories, which unexpectedly took local control of Budapest along with a dozen or so major towns, exceeded the expectations of both the public and the pundits. Every indication was that the Fidesz leadership, too, was surprised by the scope of the opposition victories.
Ever since, the government has been trying to figure out how to remedy the loss of public trust in the given geographic areas, and even more so the concomitant loss of powers it has experienced as a result. Most conspicuously, it has worked at gradually eroding municipal powers and prerogatives. And with the coronavirus epidemic, Fidesz appears to have found the perfect framework for accelerating its efforts at reclaiming a sizeable portion of the local control it lost at the time.