Steven N.
The new composition of Parliament has been finalized after counting all of the mail-in ballots, “transfer” absentee ballots within the country, and absentee ballots cast at Hungarian consulates abroad.
Based on data from the National Election Office (NVI), more than 3 million people voted for the ruling Fidesz-KDNP ticket. Over 264,000 mail-in ballots were received, with close to 94% of those going to the governing parties.
As counting was finalized yesterday, the number of parliamentary mandates for each bloc shifted several times, but Fidesz’s two-thirds majority in the National Assembly was not affected.
As previously reported, the united opposition was given two extra seats, one on the party list and one in an individual electoral district.
But Fidesz-KDNP also gained an extra mandate from its party list, taking away a seat from the far-right Our Homeland Movement. With 99% of the vote counted yesterday, NVI reduced Our Homeland’s presence in Parliament from seven seats to six.
Our Homeland was not pleased at the last-minute loss of a seat, and reacted by demanding a recount of the votes. The party claims that the proportion of fractional votes grew for the Fidesz list by just a small number of votes after the reversal of a result in a single electoral district
The party was presumably referring to the victory of opposition candidate Zoltán Vajda in Budapest’s District XVI, who was behind his Fidesz challenger by 38 votes before the weekend, but ended up with a 500-vote lead when all votes were counted yesterday.
We can say that the seventh mandate was taken from Our Homeland based on only 48 (!) votes. In view of the fact that a bagful of half-destroyed ballots was found in Târgu Mureş [Romania], and in Vojvodina [Serbia], where VMSZ [Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians] activists, who have close ties with Fidesz, delivered ballots of those entitled to vote in the election without getting an acknowledgement of receipt, we do not accept the present situation until an examination is completed.
-wrote Our Homeland President László Toroczkai in a statement.
The final distribution of seats in the next Parliament is the following:
- Fidesz-KNDP: 135 seats (47 from party list, 87 from individual electoral districts)
- Opposition alliance: 57 seats (38 list, 19 individual)
- Our Homeland: 6 seats (all from party list)
- Nationality representative (German minority): 1 seat
[Telex, Telex][Image: valasztas.hu]
