Election in Hungary: Anti-Mainstream Parties Are Back in Parliament

Indeed, the anti-mainstream parties of Hungarian politics have stood their ground. In the case of Jobbik, it was no surprise. In 2010, the party’s populist tenor and radical messaging resonated amid complex political, economic and social crises. Jobbik won 16 percent of the vote that year, finding support mostly in Hungary’s poorer northern and eastern regions. Back then, no one could predict how Jobbik might morph over the next four years. There were fears that they could grow stronger yet and pose a serious challenge to the governing Fidesz. There were also hopes that the Jobbik might be a passing fancy, and that as the country found its way out of crisis, the right-wing radicals would lose ground and disappear.

None of that happened. Rather, as the April 6 election returns show, Jobbik has become a long-term participant in Hungarian politics. They neither gained much support nor lost any. Initially outsiders, they became more predictable once in parliament. Jobbik worked hard to strengthen themselves in the Hungarian countryside. The 2014 parliamentary elections demonstrate their effectiveness in these rural precincts. Yet Jobbik’s successes there were only modest. It seems that there are vast regions of eastern and northern Hungary where Fidesz proved a much more appealing option to voters – often by large margins. While Jobbik failed to close the gap with Fidesz, the radical right proved stronger than the parties of the old left in many parts of the country – in the majority of the 88 voting districts in the Hungarian countryside, in fact. In Budapest, Jobbik remained relatively weak). A Jobbik candidate in the eastern city of Misolc came very close to winning the district outright.