Viktor Orbán's fourth two-thirds majority, a disaster for the opposition coalition – key election results

April 04. 2022. – 08:09 AM

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Viktor Orbán's fourth two-thirds majority, a disaster for the opposition coalition – key election results
Illustration: Lerch Júlia / Telex

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Now that the votes are almost all counted, we present the key results of the 2022 parliamentary elections. The bottom line: Viktor Orbán and Fidesz-KDNP won by two-thirds for the fourth time, the opposition coalition did much worse than forecasted in all preliminary polls – winning almost exclusively in Budapest's constituencies. Finally, Our Homeland Movement made it into parliament. Translation by Dominic Spadacene

Here we sum up the highlights of all the results in several bullet points.

Voter turnout was almost 70 percent

  • 69.47% of voters went to the polls, which is almost the same turnout as in 2018.

What the future holds for the 199 seats

  • Fidesz-KDNP won 135 of the 199 seats in Parliament, which is a two-thirds majority, meaning that Orbán has managed to assume office backed by a constitutional majority for the fourth time. Fidesz has made gains in every county with respect to the 2018 elections.
  • Commenting on the result, Viktor Orbán said, "We've won a resounding victory. We have won a victory so great that it can even be seen from the moon – and most certainly from Brussels."
  • The party list of the opposition coalition, DK-Jobbik-LMP-MSZP-Momentum-Párbeszéd, led by Péter Márki-Zay, won 57 seats. This number will be divided six ways, and it seems that even the strongest faction, the Democratic Coalition, won't even obtain 20 seats.
  • The opposition party leaders did not join Péter Márki-Zay on stage when he appraised the results. The prime ministerial candidate acknowledged Fidesz's victory, saying, "We do not dispute that Fidesz won this election but we do dispute the claim that this election was democratic and free."
  • Our Homeland Movement has made it into the next parliament and will form a parliamentary group with 7 members led by László Toroczkai.
  • Party leader László Toroczkai, who withdrew from Jobbik four years ago, said, "The miracle has happened – the miracle that no one believed in except those Hungarians who brought this movement to life in 2018 on the plain of Ásotthalom."
  • Imre Ritter of the German minority-list won a seat. Ritter's votes aligned with those of Fidesz in the last parliamentary term, and he is expected to continue to back the governing parties in the upcoming term.
  • The Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party received more than 3% of the vote, which does not translate into parliamentary seats, but it does provide the party with budgetary funding.
  • György Gattyán's Solution Movement also surpassed 1% but likewise below the parliamentary threshold; however, it at least means that the party does not have to pay back campaign subsidies. György Gődény's Normal Life Party, on the other hand, did not even reach the 1% threshold.

Fidesz-KDNP dominated constituency elections in the countryside – the opposition only won in two of them

  • In terms of individual victories, the Fidesz leads by a huge margin: 88-18 against the opposition coalition in 106 constituencies. Our Homeland didn't stand a chance to win in any of the constituencies (nor did they win any).
  • In the countryside, Fidesz won practically everywhere: 86 wins – the opposition only won seats in Szeged (Sándor Szabó) and Pécs (Tamás Mellár). Fidesz won in every other constituency.
  • The opposition also failed to win in cities where it had previously won before banning together: Dunaújváros and, going even further back, Tapolca.
  • The most decisive victory across the country was won by the Fidesz's Alpár Gyopáros, who beat his opposition opponent 71-20%.
  • If we look at the more important battlegrounds, again, Fidesz has reason to celebrate in a number of places. János Lázár of Fidesz handily beat Péter Márki-Zay, mayor of the very city where he lost. The race wasn't even close: Lázár beat Márki-Zay 52-39%. The former minister subsequently announced his return.
  • In Szombathely, Fidesz's Csaba Hende easily beat DK's Csaba Czeglédy 50-39%.
  • In Tapolca, Tibor Navracsics defeated Lajos Rig 51-43%.
  • In Budakeszi, Tamás Menczer defeated Bernadette Szél 47-44%, and so she will not be returning as a member of parliament in the upcoming term.
  • In Budapest, however, Fidesz's Balázs Fürjes lost 47-42% to Miklós Hajnal of Momentum. The president of the Dog Party managed to obtain 5.5% of the vote.

The opposition beats Fidesz 16-2 in Budapest's constituencies

  • In Budapest, the opposition won 16 of the 18 constituencies, while Fidesz took the 17th district (Mónika Dunai) and the constituency consisting of the 14th and 16th districts (Kristóf Szatmáry). Back in 2018, Fidesz had 6 seats in Budapest.
  • In several Budapest constituencies, the opposition might have won by smaller margins than expected: István Hiller, Ágnes Kunhalmi, and Balázs Barkóczi each won by only a few hundred votes.
  • The largest margin in Budapest was won by MSZP's Dezső Hiszékeny in the 13th district, who defeated his Fidesz opponent 60-30%.

The final result won't be announced for a couple days

The final result can only be announced once the votes from foreign representations have been received and the mail-in ballots have been counted. As there are several constituencies where the race between the first and second place candidates is a tight one – separated by just a few hundred votes – this means that the ballots of transferred voters and voters registered at foreign representations could reverse the result.

Examples include Budapest's 13th constituency, where Fidesz candidate Kristóf Szathmáry leads the opposition candidate Zoltán Vajda by 336 votes, Budapest's 15th constituency, where the opposition candidate Ágnes Kunhalmi has a lead of fewer than 500 votes over Fidesz candidate István Lévai, and Baranya County's 1st constituency, where the opposition candidate Tamás Mellár is only 190 votes ahead of Fidesz candidate János Kővári.

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