Parliamentary election campaings begin in Hungary

BEĞENDİM

ABONE OL

News

The campaign period for the April parliamentary elections in Hungary began this weekend. Posters can now be put up, campaigning is free and candidates are now collecting their recommendation forms from local election offices.

Individual candidates must collect at least 500 valid signatures to be on the ballot paper. They must be registered by 6 March at the latest, and the nomination forms must also be delivered to the electoral offices by that date. This gives candidates and their supporting parties two weeks to collect signatures.

Voters who wish to vote for a national list on 12 April can also submit their nominations as of now. Political formations and national minority self-governments have had the opportunity to register their candidacy and register as nominating organisations with the National Election Committee since 3 February.

According to the Electoral Procedures Act, campaigning is any activity that is likely to influence or attempt to influence the will of the electorate. This could be posters, direct canvassing of voters, political advertising and political canvassing, and electoral meetings.

However, the activities of electoral bodies, personal communication between citizens as individuals, and the activities of the Constitutional Court, local governments and other state bodies in the course of their statutory duties are not considered electoral campaigns.

A fierce campaign is expected

Opinion polls show that we are facing the closest election in the last 20 years, and therefore probably the most intense campaign period. Firms close to the government regularly measure Fidesz’s lead, with the Nézőpont Institute, for example, reporting a week ago that the governing party would get 46% and Tisza 40% if the elections were held now.

Independent pollsters, on the other hand, have a stable lead for Tisza. According to a survey conducted by the 21 Research Centre two weeks ago, Tisza leads Fidesz by 7 percentage points among the total population, 10 percentage points among those who can vote for a party and 16 percentage points among those who are sure voters. The Our Country, the Democratic Coalition and possibly the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party still have a chance of entering parliament.

Very difficult to predict the outcome

The results of the opinion polls should be watched with caution for the time being, not only because there is obviously a huge variance and electoral preferences could change a lot in the remaining 50 days, but because it also important to see how the parties’ popularity will be converted into votes on 12 April (i.e. which party can mobilise its voters) and how the votes will translate into parliamentary seats.

The latter will be decided by the Hungarian electoral system. Under the current system, experts say that the favourable constituency design gives Fidesz 2-3% of the list result, so even in the most extreme case, Tisza Party may get more votes but Fidesz may win more parliamentary seats and form a government. In addition, the polls do not include votes from beyond the borders, which will almost certainly improve the result of the current governing party.

Both Viktor Orbán and Péter Magyar touring the country

Election campaigning by the major parties has already started well ahead of the 50-day campaign period. Fidesz candidates and popular politicians are appearing at events, János Lázár is holding more and more Lázár info sessions, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is taking to the stage at a weekend rally and appearing at unannounced venues during the week, usually in front of a limited audience and behind closed doors. The rallies are organised by the Digital Citizens’ Circles, a Fidesz initiative, and are called anti-war rallies. This weekend the prime minister is appearing in Békéscsaba.

The pre-election rush is also underway at Tisza. On Monday, Péter Magyar embarked on a 55-day “It’s now or never” tour of the country, with the Tisza Party president holding speeches at pre-announced, open-to-the-public venues across the country in the coming weeks. On Friday, it was also revealed that he will be the Tisza Party’s list leader and candidate for prime minister, having been unanimously nominated by the party’s leadership and 106 candidates for the post. The Tisza Party will hold a campaign launch event in Budapest on Saturday, followed by the continuation of Péter Magyar’s campaign in Kaszaper, Mako and Szeged on Monday.

A lot of misleading information on the internet

The prominent role of artificial intelligence-generated content is perhaps the biggest novelty of this year’s campaign compared to previous ones. In recent months, a number of AI videos have appeared on pro-government social media sites and in online advertisements. The main character of the videos is usually Péter Magyar, and the plot is that the opposition politician is proving one of the claims made about him by government officials. Many of the posters on the streets are also based on a similar method.

The computer-generated videos sometimes appear on the prime minister’s Facebook page and on official Fidesz platforms. A few days ago, for example, a video (source in Hungarian), posted on the Fidesz Facebook page, of a Hungarian girl crying for her father, who is shot in the head, caused a huge stir. The message of the video, which now has more than half a million views, is that anyone who doesn’t vote for Fidesz is risking war.

Similar content is not only used by the government side. A few days ago, an AI campaign (source in Hungarian) was launched on the Facebook page of Ellenszél, a media outlet close to the Democratic Coalition, in support of one of DK’s main promises (to disenfranchise Hungarians living outside the country). The videos, which have hundreds of thousands of views, show a Hungarian from outside the country declaring that he will vote for Fidesz and that he doesn’t care what happens in Hungary because he doesn’t live there – and then laughing.

The campaign, which Political Capital has highlighted (source in Hungarian), has sparked a furore online, with hundreds of thousands of views of each video and hateful comments suggesting that many people believed they were watching real people. Furthermore, when viewed on a computer, there is no warning that the video is artificially produced, and even on a smartphone there is only a small caption warning that it is. We expect to see a lot more of this fake content on the internet during the campaign.