„It is worth taking a look at the facts: how has the Hungarian electoral system changed? In the past all the parties have spoken spoke eloquently about the need to significantly reduce the number of seats in Parliament, but this remained nothing but an empty promise until 2010. As far as ordinary voters are concerned the only truly perceivable change will be that the elections will consist of a single round. Even that will not represent a huge change due to the increasing number of first-round victories in individual constituencies where the winning candidate obtains more than 50 per cent of the vote, one third of the country’s constituencies in 2006 and in two thirds in 2010.
It is not, of course, as if the Left has regarded Hungary’s electoral system as immutable. In 1994, the ruling socialist-free democrats coalition which enjoyed a two-third majority in parliament, introduced single-round elections in municipal elections at six weeks’ notice, thereby leaving no time at all for the opposition to prepare. This time, for the 2014 parliamentary elections, the government announced the change two and a half years in advance.
Moreover, all of the other changes are moderate as regards their overall effects. The ratio of mandates obtainable in constituencies increased from 46 per cent before (176 constituencies in a Parliament with 386 seats) to 53 per cent (106 mandates out of 199). This modest switch of emphasis to a more majoritarian system has been introduced in the interests of stability.