BALATONFURED – This prosperous town takes its name from the idyllic Lake Balaton. After Sunday’s vote, it may metaphorically have a new nickname: Tiszatown.
That assessment may surprise supporters of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. The mayor belongs to Fidesz and the parliamentary district of which this is the seat, Veszprem 2, has been comfortably won by Fidesz since its creation. The respected national pollster Nezopont’s projection of Hungary’s 106 districts places Veszprem 2 in the Fidesz camp, one of 66 single-member seats allocated to the governing party.
It’s telling, though, that a more recent projection by the Center for Fundamental Rights places it in the undecided camp. This analysis is similarly bullish for the government, giving Fidesz 64 seats while labelling another 7 as battlegrounds. This discrepancy is an indication of the type of voter likeliest to switch their allegiance from Fidesz to Tisza on Sunday.
Balatonfured is one of Hungary’s wealthiest towns outside of the Budapest metropolitan area, according to Daily News Hungary. The district as a whole is labelled as “upper-middle-income” and it attracts a significant number of tourists, especially from Germany. Indeed, the town’s signs include “Willkommen” and “Auf Wiedersehen” with Hungarian and English greetings. I even saw a “Weinstube” while strolling through town.
That regular connection with other European Union residents means the area is likely more favourable toward the EU than other areas of Hungary. This was indirectly evident at a rally I attended for the district’s Tisza candidate, Agnes Forsthoffer (note the German family name). The event started with a reading of a pro-European poem, and one person had a Tisza-EPP button with the slogan “back to Europe”. The EU’s holding up of funds, then, is viewed by many here as a bad thing blamed on Orbán rather than as improper interference in national sovereignty.
Fidesz’s best hope is its intelligent and engaging candidate, Dr. Barbara Hegedus. In our interview, she came across as someone who knew about the local area and its challenges and was dedicated to addressing them. She told me she had held 45 forums in the district in which she talked about local as well as national issues. If Hegedus could rise above her party’s standing, she might be able to prevail.
The fact that she had doubts about that is indicative of the mood here. I asked her whether she thought she would receive more votes than the party would receive in the list vote; she thought the votes would be approximately the same. And when I asked about her mood going into the final days, she replied that she was “hopeful”. That’s the type of reply that someone who thinks she can win, but is not confident of doing so, would provide.
The mood in Forsthoffer’s camp was ebullient. Her campaign manager told me she thought Forsthoffer would win easily, and the partisan crowd looked joyful as they wore Tisza stickers and buttons and carried Tisza-labelled material like backpacks. Partisans are usually overconfident about their chances, but it was still telling.
One could simply chalk this up to a local, idiosyncratic reaction that is not representative of the national mood. But while the area’s demographics suggests a greater swing away from Fidesz than will happen nationally, it is not an isolated case. One voter I spoke with eagerly told me their neighbours would vote for change and cited the poor local roads and outdated hospital as reasons for their disappointment. Those factors are present everywhere and are cited by Péter Magyar as reasons to vote for Tisza.
There are other telling signs that the ground underneath Fidesz may be giving ways. It is impossible to decide a priori which of the competing sets of polls to believe, but the fact that Fidesz’s campaign is largely negative suggest that it believes it must discredit the opposition to win. Even the positive things Hegedus said about Fidesz were more about the past, things Fidesz has done rather than things they will do if they retain power. After sixteen years in power, it’s telling that Fidesz’s final messages are more about discrediting Tisza rather than offering a positive assessment of its long rule.
Another sign of the times is the fact that Fidesz is asking supporters of Our Homeland to split their tickets, giving their vote to the Fidesz candidate at the district level while backing Our Homeland on the list vote. That is indicative of something a party that is scraping for every vote does, not one that really thinks it is six or more points ahead would do.
The campaign is now coming down to a final question: Does the voter want change or does he crave stability? Hegedus agreed this was the question, arguing that people would vote Fidesz because they wanted a stable set of hands to navigate the uncertainties that the energy insecurity and global conflicts were causing. Forsthoffer told me that the Fidesz campaign’s claiming Tisza was unready to govern and were too risky was “fake news,” an attempt to create false enemies when people were really upset about Fidesz corruption, inflation, poor social services, and a bad economy. The result, here and nationwide, will likely ride on which of these two arguments voters believe.
Our US poll expert in the heart of the campaign: ‘Hungarian election remains a tight battle’