Hungary’s Municipal Elections: The Beginning of the End for Orban?

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...