Some Individual Races Still Too Close to Call

The map above shows results from the 2022 parliamentary elections, with orange signifying areas won by Fidesz-KDNP, and blue won by the United for Hungary democratic opposition coalition. Apart from most of Budapest, opposition candidates were only able to pull off wins in the southern cities of Szeged and Pécs.

But the race remains very close in Pécs, with the opposition’s Tamás Mellár leading János Kővári by just 255 votes as nearly 3,500 votes from Hungarian consulates and absentee votes within the country are still to be counted on Saturday. Mellár won this district four years ago by over 1,000 votes.

In Szeged, however, Sándor Szabó is ahead by a wide margin, having gained 49% of the vote. This is traditionally a left-wing electoral district, and the united opposition managed to increase its share of the vote compared to 2018, when 44% of the district voted for Szabó.

Fidesz candidates won everywhere else in the country except for most of Budapest, but the extra votes still to come in over the weekend may affect the final result in some places.

In Budapest’s 13th electoral district, Fidesz’s Kristóf Szatmáry leads opposition candidate Zoltán Vajda by a mere 38 votes. In the capital’s 14th electoral district, Mónika Dunai from Fidesz has a slightly more comfortable lead with 761 votes.

If the opposition wins the majority of votes from abroad and absentee votes in these districts, the current results for both seats could be overturned, especially in the 13th.

At the same time, opposition candidate Ágnes Kunhalmi has a narrow lead of just 449 votes in Budapest’s 15th electoral district, with around 3,500 votes in this district still to be counted this weekend.

In theory, the opposition could even flip the seats in Miskolc and Dunaújváros, but they would need the overwhelming number of votes over the weekend to go their way. In Miskolc, Fidesz’s János Kiss has a 1,030-vote lead, but with 2,369 votes still outstanding.

Gergely Kálló, however, is 1,549 votes behind in Dunaújváros. The incumbent candidate for the united opposition managed to win the district in a special election two years ago, but he would need to win 76% of the 2,039 outstanding votes this year to keep his seat.

[444][Image: valasztas.hu]