Steven N.
“It’s clear that the election is still in doubt,” said Endre Hann, director of polling company Medián (pictured), to news portal 444.
The site noted that Medián’s polls are typically among the most reliable, such as when they indicated in the week before the 2018 election that Fidesz could end up with two-thirds of seats in Parliament.
Hann said that the race appears closer now than it did four years ago, when the issue was whether the governing party would reach a two-thirds margin of victory.
The pollster considers Fidesz more likely to win, but he thinks this can’t be definitively predicted yet. There haven’t been many polls, he states, because the media doesn’t have money to conduct them.
The primary elections last fall were a huge success for the united opposition, but there has been more volatility in the electorate since then. Fidesz has strengthened its position, but at the moment it’s hard to determine how much of an effect the war has had on voter intent.
One can sense that the Prime Minister was put in an embarrassing position, but Hann claims that it took less than a week for him to find the right tone.
The situation is uncertain, Hann said, as it is not known how well the opposition can convey the message that there has been a shift in tone on the issue of Hungary’s Russian-friendly orientation, which Orbán should be held accountable for. At the same time, a sense of security, stability, and reassurance are very important to people, and the means to generate these feelings are mostly in the hands of those in power.
Reacting to Viktor Orbán’s March 15 speech claiming that Fidesz had never been in such good shape before an election, Endre Hann said that there were convincing studies that argue the Prime Minister is confident because he knows his polling numbes truly are good, while others argue he is worried because they are trending against him.
In any case, the pollster sees a huge battle to try to turn out the vote for the rest of the election campaign.
