What failed in the united opposition’s campaign to beat Fidesz?

In 2022, for the first time since Orbán came to power in 2010, opposition parties were — mostly — united against Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz. After a successful primary election with a high turnout, which let opposition voters choose local candidates as well as the prime ministerial candidate, the united opposition was polling even higher than the governing party.

But what ended up happening was that Fidesz won by its largest margin, 54% to 34%. The opposition hasn’t recovered ever since, which means that Fidesz has basically no opposition when inflation is one of the highest in the EU.

But what failed in the united opposition’s campaign? It would be easy to blame the extraordinary difference in financial resources, or the fact that the state was taken over by the governing party. Some say that an opposition victory in Hungary’s half-autocratic system is almost impossible. That might be true, but losing by such a wide margin has to have its own reasons.

Constant internal conflicts. The Hungarian opposition basically consists of 6 parties that are constantly competing to be the leading force within the opposition. This competition reached its height in the fall of 2021, during the opposition’s primary election to choose its local candidates and prime ministerial candidate. After a heated campaign, an independent mid-town mayor, Péter Márki-Zay prevailed, further complicating the conditions of the opposition. Mr Márki-Zay asked one of the parties’ leaders to abstain from campaigning, then later complained that some of the parties are not supportive enough. These together showed that the opposition is not actually united, which — especially in times of war — is off-putting for a lot of voters.

For example, Jobbik President Péter Jakab said in an interview three months before the election that “Death doesn’t choose by party affiliation, and neither does stupidity, it seems”. This was a message to Mr Márki-Zay, who earlier talked about how Fidesz has less voters because many of them died of COVID. The media pointed out afterwards that Mr Jakab basically called his party’s prime ministerial candidate stupid.

Undisciplined messaging. While Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz operates a near-perfect propaganda machine, the 106 local candidates of the opposition were unable to stick to a single message during the campaign. The competition and bad blood between the parties made it impossible for the campaign HQ to directly communicate with local candidates, which basically meant that the local candidates, the ones closest to actual voters, were not message amplifiers. For example, Mr Márki-Zay even launched a billboard campaign saying that ‘Only Fidesz is inviting migrants to Hungary’. Even though this was an expensive campaign element, it was not echoed by local candidates at all.

Mistakes by the prime ministerial candidate. While Mr Márki-Zay unexpectedly won the primary election with a strong campaign, he made several mistakes during the campaign. One of the more important mistakes was that he started talking about founding his own party, asking other opposition parties to let him form a parliamentary faction after the election. With these internal political moves, he quickly lost his independent, above-the-fray image, becoming just another opposition politician. This, contributed to deteriorating the unity in the opposition as the face f the campaign lost the neutrality to unite all fronts.

Often you come to the case of coalition building only after results come along. Yet, in many cases in different campaigns you will be forced to work in a united front with competitors. These mistakes are a good example of a very general problem: when working with competitors the lack off discipline equals doom. United campaigning coalitions work well if there is a strong structure that sets a clear message and a clear strategy. The Hungarian failure is a case study for other parties to avoid these mistakes in future united fronts.

Author: Gergő Papp

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