“Hungary is trailing behind Russia by 10 years”

With just five weeks left before Hungary’s most nail-biting election in 20 years, independent polls show prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement trailing Péter Magyar’s Tisza party by an average nine points.Yet, a system rigged in Fidesz’s favour by 16 years of unconstrained gerrymandering, media control and pre-election fiscal bribes could still see MAGA’s closest European ally returned to office. “Hungary is trailing behind Russia by ten years and that’s true for almost everything,” Márton Schlanger, a political polling analyst at the Republikon Institute, tells the Twenty-Four Two Podcast. “It’s the same in ways of campaigning and how blatantly, outrageously confident the governing party can be in manipulating the public and manipulating the elections”.Hungarian polling has become deeply politicised as independent firms like Republikon, Medián, 21, Závecz and Publicus publish surveys diverging radically from those released by government-aligned bodies including pop-up organisations claiming Fidesz leads. Medián, in particular, is accused by Orbán and allies of manipulating data to produce a bombshell poll, which calculated a 20-point Tisza lead among voters who had chosen a party and would definitely participate on April 12.“I’m not sure if I’m flattered or scared about all of the attention that polls are receiving in this campaign, not just in the past months, but ever since the [2024] clemency scandal and Tisza appeared on the field, it has been immense,” says Schlanger.The US-Israeli war with Iran and Fidesz’s intensified campaign against Ukraine has diverted attention from the incumbents’ economic mismanagement and corruption that has been driving support for Magyar and Tisza. “It could help Fidesz but, overall, I don’t think that this will turn the tide in itself,” says Schlanger.Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com