Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 3 April 2022 to elect the National Assembly, coinciding with a referendum. Hungary's incumbent prime minister Viktor Orbán won re-election to a fourth term. Addressing his supporters after the partial results showed Fidesz–KDNP leading by a wide margin, Orbán said: "We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels." Opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay admitted defeat shortly after Orbán's speech. Reuters described it as a "crushing victory".
With 54.13% of the popular vote, Fidesz received the highest vote share by any party since the Fall of Communism in 1989. The election had been predicted to be closer than in previous years but Fidesz still held a 5–6 percentage point lead in the polls leading up to the vote. OSCE deployed a full monitoring mission for the vote. The results showed that Fidesz outperformed polls, winning its first absolute majority of the vote share since 2010 while expanding its supermajority to control 135 seats of the 199-seat Parliament, comfortably ahead of the opposition alliance United for Hungary, which was set to win 57 seats after 100% of the votes had been counted. The Our Homeland Movement party won seats for the first time, obtaining 6 seats.
Internationally, the election was seen as a victory for right-wing populism with Orbán being an ally of then former US President Donald Trump and other right-wing figures.
Background
Creation of joint opposition list On 8 April 2018, just like in 2010 and 2014, Fidesz-KDNP won with two-third majority, collecting almost every second votes of people. Following the election, the main opposition parties, which had previously run alone or partly united, gradually realized that Fidesz could only be defeated through full cooperation. The first step of this was a joint demonstration in December of that year against the so called "slave law", which would have required workers to work in overtime.
In 2019 local elections, Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, LMP – Hungary's Green Party, Hungarian Socialist Party, Momentum Movement, Dialogue for Hungary, and numerous other parties or independent candidates ran in joint lists. It enabled opposition parties to win the majority in the General Assembly of Budapest and in ten of the 23 cities with county rights.
On 13 August 2020, the six parties decided to field joint candidates in all of Hungary's 106 constituencies and launch a joint program for the elections, later agreed on running with a common candidate for Prime Minister, to be selected in a primary election. They expected the candidate to be selected by 23 October 2021.Közös miniszterelnök-jelöltet állítanak az ellenzéki pártok 2022-re, telex.hu (in Hungarian) On 20 December 2020, DK, Jobbik, Momentum, MSZP, LMP and Dialogue decided on running together on a common list, solidifying their electoral alliance. The leaders of the respective parties have also signed a declaration containing the terms of their cooperation, titled "Korszakváltás Garanciái" (Principles for Hungary's governance after 2022"). The opposition coalition was very ideologically diverse, something described by observers as a potential hindrance to presenting a united front to defeat Orbán.
Amendment of the electoral law The electoral law, under which the previous two elections were held (2014 and 2018), specified the number of constituency candidates a party needed to run nationwide at 27, in at least 9 counties. On 15 December 2020, the National Assembly, in which the governing parties held the needed a two-third majority, voted to increase the requirements to a total of 71 constituency candidates in at least 14 counties and the capital.
Opposition primary
The Opposition primary was held in Hungary, between 12 and 27 September 2021 (first round) and 10–16 October 2021 (second round), to select the candidate for Prime Minister supported by the opposition parties to form a coalition to compete in the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election. It was the first countrywide primary election in the political history of Hungary. On 17 October 2021, non-partisan candidate Péter Márki-Zay won in the runoff (second round) of the opposition primary, becoming the United Opposition candidate in the election for prime minister. The parties had also selected common candidates for single-member districts via the primary in the first round.
Electoral system
The 199 members of the National Assembly are to be elected by mixed-member majoritarian representation with two methods; 106 are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting, with the remaining 93 elected from a single nationwide constituency mostly by proportional representation, via a partially compensatory system (a hybrid of parallel voting and mixed single vote). The electoral threshold is set at 5%, although this is raised to 10% for coalitions of two parties and 15% for coalitions of three or more parties. Seats are allocated using the d'Hondt method.Electoral system IPU
The governing party is allowed to draw the boundaries of the single-member constituencies, and the boundaries were gerrymandered by the Fidesz government prior to the 2014 elections. The redrawing was done in a way that smaller constituencies (with fewer than 70,000 voters) had higher concentrations of Fidesz voters than larger constituencies (over 80,000 voters), meaning fewer votes were required to elect Fidesz constituency candidates.A wild gerrymander makes Hungary’s Fidesz party hard to dislodge The Economist, 2 April 2022 In 2010, seats varied in population by 35%.
Since 2014 each of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Greek, Polish, Romani, Romanian, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian ethnic minorities can win one of the 93 party lists seats if they register as a specific list and reach a lowered quota of of the total of party list votes. Each minority is able to send a minority spokesman – without the rights of an MP – to the National Assembly, if the list does not reach this lowered quota.Nemzeti Választási Iroda National Election Office Due to internal disputes, the National Self-Government of Romani did not participate in the election.
Parties and coalitions The following parties were represented in the National Assembly, or have commonly included in public opinion polling: Party/Coalition Ideology Leader(s) 2018 result Seats just before the election Seats Fidesz–KDNP Fidesz National conservatism Viktor Orbán 49.27 KDNP Christian right Zsolt Semjén Jobbik Conservatism Péter Jakab 19.06 MSZP Social democracy Bertalan TóthÁgnes Kunhalmi 11.31 Párbeszéd Green politics Gergely KarácsonyTímea Szabó DK Social liberalism Ferenc Gyurcsány 5.38 LMP Green liberalism 7.06 Momentum Liberalism Anna Donáth 3.06 Együtt Péter Juhász 0.66 MNOÖ Imre Ritter 0.46 MKKP Joke party Gergely KovácsZsuzsanna Döme 1.73 MH László Toroczkai Did not exist Függetlenek – – 1.01
Campaign During the election, Orbán and Fidesz portrayed the election as a choice between peace or war, with Fidesz for peace and the opposition for war.
Opinion polls
Results +Turnout (within Hungary only, excluding eligible voters abroad)7:009:0011:0013:0015:0017:0018:30Overall1.82%10.31%25.77%40.01%52.75%62.92%67.80%70.21%
Result by constituency
Party list results by county and in the diaspora
County Fidesz–KDNP EM MH MKKP MEMO NÉP Turnout Bács-Kiskun57.25 29.66 7.58 3.08 1.01 0.81 67.5% Baranya49.67 36.08 5.93 3.54 0.93 0.86 67.5% Békés52.81 34.36 7.64 2.62 0.92 0.89 66.4% Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén54.38 34.29 6.89 2.31 0.99 0.78 64.7% Budapest 40.8447.84 4.11 5.19 1.26 0.53 75.5% Csongrád-Csanád47.44 39.69 7.34 3.61 1.10 0.72 70.5% Fejér53.55 33.80 6.62 3.52 1.15 0.76 71.5% Győr-Moson-Sopron57.07 30.83 6.21 3.28 1.33 0.72 73.7% Hajdú-Bihar57.88 30.87 6.60 2.69 1.02 0.83 66.1% Heves54.98 33.37 7.31 2.50 0.97 0.74 69.0% Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok55.58 33.02 7.15 2.45 0.95 0.82 65.9% Komárom-Esztergom50.53 36.32 6.72 3.39 1.11 0.95 69.3% Nógrád59.00 29.27 7.66 2.15 0.80 0.68 66.9% Pest50.88 36.44 5.81 4.05 1.25 0.66 72.9% Somogy56.33 33.48 5.97 2.22 1.02 0.66 68.2% Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg61.66 29.04 5.59 1.64 0.91 0.80 65.4% Tolna58.95 28.49 6.67 2.46 0.90 0.81 68.8% Vas59.94 29.55 5.59 2.89 0.89 0.72 74.8% Veszprém52.57 34.44 6.88 3.39 1.00 0.76 71.8% Zala56.72 31.98 6.63 2.68 0.95 0.94 71.6% Total in Hungary52.45 36.15 6.15 3.42 1.10 0.73 70.21% Diaspora93.89 4.12 1.06 0.61 0.10 0.22 – Total54.13 34.44 5.88 3.27 1.04 0.70 69.59%
Aftermath
Hungary's incumbent prime minister Viktor Orbán, seeking a fourth consecutive term in office, declared victory on the night of the election once partial results showed Fidesz leading the vote by a wide margin. Addressing his supporters after these results, Orbán said: "We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels." Orbán would go on to declare his victory as a rebuke against the Hungarian left, international media, George Soros, the "Brussels bureaucrats", and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay conceded the election shortly after Orbán's speech. Reuters described it as a "crushing victory", and that "voters endorsed his ambition of a conservative, 'illiberal' state and shrugged off concerns over Budapest's close ties with Moscow."
Although the election had been predicted to be closer than in previous years, Fidesz maintained a 5–6 percentage point lead in the polls leading up to the vote. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitored the vote amid fears of electoral fraud. Preliminary results showed Fidesz was set to outperform polls, retain its supermajority, and control 135 seats of the 199-seat Hungarian Parliament, significantly ahead of the main opposition alliance United for Hungary, which was set to win 57 seats after 100% of the votes had been counted. The Mi Hazánk party also entered Parliament for the first time, winning 6 seats.
Analysis Domestically, the degree of Fidesz's victory was attributed to Fidesz's influence over the domestic media landscape, voters' desire for stability during the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, strong ideological differences within the main opposition coalition, the perception of Márki-Zay as inexperienced, and urban–rural political polarization. Some analysts claimed that the majority of Jobbik voters turned out for Fidesz or Mi Hazánk instead of the united opposition. Márki-Zay shared this assessment, admitting that the united opposition may have lost up to "two thirds" of Jobbik voters.
On the Hungarian left, there was disagreement about how to interpret the united opposition's defeat. DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány and Jobbik leader Péter Jakab blamed Márki-Zay, while Bernadett Szél and Ákos Hadházy did not. Péter Ungár stated that while it was a "strategic mistake" for a centre-left alliance to nominate the conservative Márki-Zay, the united opposition's "elitist" rhetoric may have hurt it with rural voters even in traditionally left-leaning constituencies. Some opposition leaders even questioned whether forming a united front had been advantageous. Imre Komjáthi, a socialist MP, said that "the cracks and contradictions between our parties [in] ideology, technicalities, and resources had started to introduce coordination problems" during the election. He added that, in his view, the coalition had not been "genuine."
Politico predicted Orbán's victory would lead to further clashes between the Hungarian government and European Union institutions. Analysts found that Fidesz performed strongest in areas with high birthrates and with lower educational or economic attainment, while the united opposition did best in Budapest and in a few other urban areas.
Conduct