What results could have emerged on June 9 if Péter Magyar had not taken over a pre-existing party and participated in the EP elections? More importantly, what would be the outcome now or in the near future if opposition parties and Fidesz had to face off without the presence of Tisza? When trying to determine whether Viktor Orbán can be considered the winner or loser of the double elections, there is hardly a better basis for comparison than examining what changes had been brought about by the appearance of the election’s protagonist, Tisza.
While it surely can’t provide complete answers to these hypothetical questions, this analysis based on research and election data aims to provide insights into these issues. Naturally, we will never know what the past few months of Hungarian politics would have been all about if Péter Magyar had not stepped into the spotlight. One can only speculate on how the election results moved public opinion (most likely further strengthening Tisza’s position). Finally, we certainly cannot state with full confidence that future trends will follow past patterns. What we do very much know, however, is the situation preceding Tisza’s emergence and the behaviour of voters who were forced to choose from a menu not including Tisza – as Péter Magyar and his team could not field a single county list outside the capital, were not considered a serious contender in any mayoral race, did not even run in most major towns and announced no official support for anyone. Additionally, data from 21 Research Centre’s public opinion polls show — albeit with some statistical uncertainty — whom Tisza Party supporters would have voted for, had their favourite option not run.
The data therefore indicates what the second choice of Tisza voters would have been. Nearly a third did not want to or could not name another preferred party. Only 4 per cent would have voted for Fidesz in Tisza’s absence. This represents a few tens of thousands of people, that’s the number of Fidesz supporters that Magyar’s movement was able to attract.
It is also striking that the biggest loser of Tisza’s candidacy was MKKP, the “Two-Tailed Dog Party” – Hungary’s once-joke party has been turning ever more serious. The survey suggests that Tisza could have drawn nearly 200,000 voters from their camp. A similar number of voters were lost by former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s left-wing DK and centrist-liberal Momentum as well, but the results make it clear that this “hurt” DK less than the other two parties that ended up not reaching the 5 per cent threshold. Far-right Mi Hazánk was the best at weathering the political storm, while proportionally, the parties of former Jobbik-chief Gábor Vona and 2022 opposition PM candidate Péter Márki-Zay suffered the most, as far more of their potential voters opted for Tisza than how many eventually voted for them. Conservative Jobbik and green party LMP, however, cannot blame their weak performance on Tisza, as the research indicates they would not have had significantly more voters even without Péter Magyar’s emergence.
Basing our conclusions solely on these data (that is, adding the secondary preferences of Tisza voters to the actual vote counts), the hypothetical scenario without Tisza would have seen Márki-Zay’s Mindenki Magyarországa and Vona’s 2RK achieve around 2–3 per cent, Momentum 7–8 per cent, Mi Hazánk and MKKP 9 per cent, while DK could have expected around 12 per cent. There is, of course, significant statistical uncertainty in this, and we do not know how the hypothetical campaigns without Tisza would have altered the power dynamics.
Election results are even better to lean on. Tisza was present on the EP list but not on the county lists, allowing for a relatively good comparison between the two sets of numbers — if we subtract the results of county-level cities from the county EP results (since voters in these cities could not vote on county lists). This picture is nuanced by the fact that not only Tisza but also many small parties were missing from the county list ballots that were present in the EP election. This was somewhat compensated in a few counties by local civil lists, and also by the notion that the “genre” difference between EP and county list votes might have mattered to a limited extent. The table below shows the relevant numbers for each county since only Fidesz, DK, and Mi Hazánk could field lists in every county.
Six per cent of Fidesz’s current voters outside of large towns (or at least the vast majority of them) probably voted for Tisza and the small parties, supporting the ruling party on the county list but not in the EP election (this is the difference and ratio between 52 and 49 in the table). For Mi Hazánk and DK, this applied to every second county list voter, and for Momentum and MKKP, it applied to the majority. This decline, however, cannot be attributed solely to Tisza, especially regarding the opposition parties, as the EP ballot also featured five parties with nationwide support of one per cent or less (these parties could not field county lists in most counties). In the case of Momentum, one likely destination of voter migration was MKKP. Due to MKKP, it’s worth looking at Fejér County separately, as this was the only county where the party fielded a county list.
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Although Fejér is not representative of the entire country, it is evident that Momentum could not achieve as outstanding a result there as on other county lists, likely because MKKP and local civil groups siphoned off many potential voters. Therefore, Momentum was not only affected by Tisza’s emergence but also by the prominence of the former joke party and the appearance of many small parties. Even in a world without Tisza, the liberal centrists could only have achieved good results resembling those of 2019 if their competition had been significantly weaker. Despite the presence of Momentum and civil organisations, MKKP received substantial support in the county (not counting Székesfehérvár and Dunaújváros), with Gergely Kovács’s party surpassing both Momentum and the DK-led alliance, even though its voter camp is much more city-based than DK’s. This (and partly the research data on secondary preferences) suggests that
It is unlikely that Mi Hazánk would have surpassed DK, as they are significantly weaker in major cities, but the far-right formation would not have lagged far behind. However, it seems clear from the county list results that DK would not have been the dominant opposition force even if Tisza had not entered the race. Overall, Mi Hazánk significantly outperformed its left-wing competitor on the county lists. But excluding MSZP, which ran separately on the county list, Momentum achieved similar results to DK (even though Momentum is also a more city-centric party compared to DK).
This picture is further reinforced by examining county-level cities and Budapest districts with significant internal competition within the opposition regarding the mayoral election (the table below reviews these municipalities). In places with a united opposition or an incumbent DK mayor, their supported candidate generally performed well: in Budapest, all of DK’s mayors earned another term, and their candidate won in the town of Nagykanizsa as well. However, these candidates were elected despite their DK affiliation, rather than because of it — they would present themselves as united opposition candidates during their campaigns. Even after the 2022 fiasco, the political brand of the opposition alliance is still stronger than that of the parties that comprised it. Therefore, we may learn more from examining the performance of DK-supported candidates when faced with opposition competition.
Although DK fared quite competitively in the internal opposition competition during the 2021 primary election, their 2024 results were much more modest, even though Tisza stayed out of most of the cases above (with one exception). Moreover, in most cases, DK pulled other parties behind its candidates (or in some instances, such as in Sopron and Eger, they were the ones to support their allies). What the results in Table 4 have in common is not only that DK-supported candidates finished far behind the eventual winners but also that they managed to integrate only a minority of opposition voters. Even with fewer party logos on their billboards, local civil candidates, or ones supported by MKKP or even Momentum, would at least pose significant problems or even surpass DK. The main takeaway of the internal opposition competition was the surprisingly strong atmosphere of protest against the older parties – and we haven’t even mentioned Budapest’s District 14, which was much more a failure of Csaba Horváth than that of DK behind him.
Overall: removing Tisza from the picture, the result would be an extremely fragmented opposition field. According to the research data and the county list and mayoral election results consistent therewith, DK would lead the opposition competition but would be far from dominance and would likely enjoy less than 15 per cent of total support. Mi Hazánk, and especially MKKP, would benefit significantly from the protest sentiment, possibly achieving around or just over 10 per cent. Momentum would certainly be above the 5 per cent threshold but with still less support than their 10 per cent result in 2019. The parties of Vona and Márki-Zay could strengthen by a few percentage points but would still remain below the threshold, according to the data. These parties would be almost entirely incapable of forming coalitions with each other: among the more significant parties, only DK and Momentum showed some mutual willingness to cooperate, but whether this will continue in the future is highly doubtful. Meanwhile Fidesz could retain that few per cent of its voters who moved on to Tisza. Even in this case, the ruling party – still experiencing a minor decline in support – would be in a situation that is more secure, predictable, and favourable due to the fragmented opposition.
The author, political scientist Dániel Róna is the director of 21 Research Centre.
