If the majority of the country is right-wing, they’ll elect a right-wing leader. The best you can hope for is that they elect the better one.
I found this video last night, and even if it hadn’t included the guy in the orange stocking cap, I would post it here anyway. Between this and the election in Festus, MO, yes, “People Have The Power.”
According to what little I know, there are 199 seats in the Hungarian parliament.
The reform Tisza party won 138 of 199 seats.
Orban’s party won 55 seats
A different far right party won 6 seats.
So why was this election only between 3 right wing parties? Wikipedia says the TISZA party is center-right, and the other 2 parties are far right. Is the Tisza party the party for everyone upset about right wing fascism (the far left through the center right)?
Also I don’t know a ton about the situation, but the fact that Orban conceded so fast worries me. It makes me wonder if he has set things up behind the scenes to neuter the power of the parliament.
In Venezuela when the public voted for opposition parties in congress to stand up to Chavez and Maduro, the executive branch just neutered the power of the legislative branch.
I don’t know how much power the legislative branch will actually have in Hungary. But I hope this is a blow against far right wing ethnonationalism.
Looking into it, the parliament elects the prime minister. So lets hope they get rid of Orban and we see things start to get better.
I am mostly guessing here but as I understand things Hungary is a largely rural country once you get outside Budapest. Of the top 20 cities and towns Budapest is easily the largest with just under 1.7 million people. None of the other 19 municipalities on that list break 200K with numbers 9 - 20 all being under 100K. Given that I can’t say I’m terribly surprised the most liberal political party of note is center-right.
Also, I have a close friend who was born and raised in a small town in Hungary. He still has grandparents and cousins who live in the countryside and whenever this topic comes up he complains about how conservative they are and up until this point were big Orban supporters.
Hungary is not naturally right-wing. Before Orban, the ruling party was the left-wing Hungarian Socialist Party.
The second largest party in the outgoing parliament is the center left Democratic Coalition. Today they went from fifteen seats to zero.
From what I read about this before the election, the reason that support for the left collapsed this year is that left-leaning voters realized that dividing the anti-Orban vote leads to defeat. They supported Peter Magyar because he had the best chance of winning.
Now, although I do not buy Hungary being naturally right wing due to rural dominance, it may be temporarily right-wing because Orban gained control of the media (except for the internet). I’ll be interested to learn what, if anything, Magyar is going to do about this.
The Votemaster is convinced that Vance’s visit and Trump’s endorsement hurt Orban’s chances. And Trump would not have conceded had he been beaten by 2-1. He would still have complained that the vote was rigged. And I still look on this year’s election with great trepidation. I will try to vote by mail, but I have no faith in its being counted.
Who is the votemaster? Do you have a link?
As for the concept, I’m pretty darn sure that most people in the world are patriots who resent foreigners telling them who to vote for.
Vance endorsed. If Hungarians are normal, that was bound to backfire.
Trump tried to bribe with promises of foreign aid. Sometimes bribery does work, so I didn’t know what to make of that. Has that kind of bribery every been tried before?
I don’t understand what you mean about “naturally” right-wing since I said nothing of the sort. Most of the support Orban/Fidesz have enjoyed over the last 16 years has been rural based. THAT is a fact.
If the center left party in the outgoing parliament only had 15 seats I would say they were pretty weak when it came to potentially gaining power. And yes, people coalesced around Magyar because he was the only one that had a chance to oust Orban.
Hopefully over the next few years things will normalize and there will be parties spread across the spectrum from center to left.
45/47 doesn’t seem to have been concerned about sending his V.P. and cash incentives as flagrant interference in the electoral affairs of other countries.
A precedent being he wasn’t concerned about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S.A. elections et al.
Yes, with Argentina. Milei was elected so maybe it worked?
This is really, really good news out of Hungary. Also, many EU votes regarding Ukraine were foiled by Hungary’s veto (aiui any EU country can veto these sorts of issues, stuff like foreign policy must be agreed on unanimously?). So a shit in Hungary’s government could also mean a big shift in EU behavior (or it could mean that other countries that would have voted no but his behind Hungary’s vote will need a new scapegoat.
Since it’s a parliamentary system, isn’t it more like, AOC, Josh Shapiro, Vance, and Joe Manchin II are all running at the same time, Joe Manchin II is way ahead, and in order to ensure a victory against Vance he allies with AOC, Shapiro, and Manchin by agreeing to push some of their policies if they get him over the line to build a government?
Anyways, I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Tisza for being “too right wing” or whatever, and I think that completely misses the point.
You can fall many places on the right to left scale. That’s not the question here. If you live in a liberal and free society, it’s a fine question to ask. But Hungarians are, at the very least, on the cusp of no longer doing so, if they haven’t already left that world behind. They have a more important question, one that we in America also face whenever MAGA is on the ballot. The question is whether you value liberal values, like the freedom to hold these different left to right positions and debate them openly. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter where you fall on the right to left scale. You’re Illiberal and should be cast out.
In Hungary, the party that supports Liberalism overwhelmingly threw out the party that doesn’t. Now they can and should have policy discussions about where on the right to left scale their governance of the country should fall.
Because Hungarians are by and large fairly conservative, it would seem.
That’s how it seems to have shaken out.
And that probably has a lot to do with the unpopularity of the left wing in Hungary today. They trashed the economy in the early 2000s and then when the 2008 crash happened Hungary was one of the hardest hit countries in Europe because of how bad their situation was going in.
I guess what’s interesting is that people swung away from Orban, but without swinging back towards the MSZP.
Part of what driving that is apparently immigration. Tisza is apparently looking to reduce immigration beyond where Orban had it, which I imagine the left wing parties wouldn’t agree with. Although many MSZP members threw in with Tisza and the party didn’t run specifically to give Tisza more momentum. So IDK.
This is an early WAG.
Péter Magyar is a conservative, where Orbán is better described as reactionary. Magyar is not going to open the borders for immigration or transform the country to a pinko-liberal land. I think he will play nice with Brussels (both Nato and EU), because it really is in the country’s best interest. Keep that money flowing in, ease up on repression.
Compared to other EU leaders, he much more like Georgia Meloni* than Donald Tusk. He’ll probably try to placate the xenohobic right and the outright fascist residue of the Arrow Cross, while at the same time turning away somewhat from TrumPutin.
Don’t expect a strong left turn.
*Meloni must be regarded as some kind of success, according to some metric. If she’s still in charge by fall, it’s quite an achievemnt.. Italy has had 69 governments since WWII, average: 1.1 years. She will hit four years in October, making it the third longest since 1945. Clearly she’s doing something right.
Has Trump commented on the election loss yet?
I get the impression, from what the Guardian says about Magyar, that he’s at best sceptical about support for Ukraine, but I guess he may opt for not blocking EU support for Ukraine while trying hard to avoid participating if he can.
His big job, from his POV, is internal - rooting out the corruption around EU and other public funds within Hungary, restoring an independent judiciary and media and a non-partisan public service ethos. How this compares with Poland’s experience, given that the state President, like Poland’s, is of the opposite party, might be relevant.
I would like to subscribe to your auto-correct.
Yes, and it shows a shift away from Right Wing Populist leaders.
Orban is a Right Wing Populist. like trump, Modi, Bolsonaro and Javier Milei .
The Votemaster is at www.electoralvote.com