President Tamás Sulyok has officially set the date, and the campaign will run for fifty days prior to the election, beginning on 21 February.
  • wizzorEnglish
    61·
    1 month ago

    So… Is it likely these will be fair elections? And will Orban be elected again?

    • idegenszavak@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      141·
      1 month ago

      It’s not a completely level playing field, but isn’t like Russian or Belorussian situation either:

      • Districts are heavily gerrymandered
      • There are special rules for Hungarians voting in neighboring countries, and minorities in Hungary, they give 2-3 seats to Orban automatically out of 199
      • Two thirds of the seats are local FPTP with strange compensation rules.
      • The system prefers big parties. Opposition until this year consisted 10s of small parties, vs 2 parties behind Orbán. Now there is a new challenger, Peter Magyar and his Tisza party.

      According to calculations the voting system gives Orbán 5-10% advantage, it’s not impossible.

      The biggest problem is everything outside the election:

      • All print newspaper owned by Orban’s cronies
      • All radio stations owned by them
      • All tv stations owned by them (except one, RTL)
      • All public street advertisement owned by them

      If someone doesn’t search deliberately for news outside the propaganda machine they won’t ever meet with it accidentally. If someone doesn’t care about politics they will only hear their lies.

      And will Orban be elected again?

      According to polls there is a chance Magyar will win.