Péter Bayer - Blog 1: What would it take to beat Viktor Orbán?

Blog 1: What would it take to beat Viktor Orbán?

What would it take to beat Viktor Orbán?

A fractured opposition gives 10% to Fidesz

With the 2018 Hungarian Parliamentary elections approaching, left-wing opposition parties face the problem of coalition formation. Last week saw the possibility of any alliance on the left hit rock bottom as the parties show little signs of compromise, with the newest addition to the race, Momentum, outright declaring they would not participate in any such formation. In this article I review the Hungarian voting system, as well as speculate on what coalitions might end up forming and how these decisions could influence the chances of a change in government.

Hungary’s 2014 elections brought about a historic victory for the governing right-wing Fidesz-KDNP coalition. Viktor Orbán has become the first person in Hungary’s democratic history to have been elected Prime Minister for a third time, and to have been reelected after serving a full term, while Fidesz-KDNP became the first coalition to retain its supermajority in the National Assembly. The Christian-conservative victory meant a crushing blow to the left-wing political alliance Összefogás (Unity), also known as Kormányváltás (Change of Government). Attila Mesterházy (MSZP) and Gordon Bajnai (Együtt), two of Összefogás’s five principal figures, the five party leaders participating in the alliance, and leading members of their National List, have disappeared from political life in the direct aftermath of the election, with another two of them, Gábor Fodor (MLP) and Tímea Szabó (PM) getting marginalized to the point of nonexistence, leaving only former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány (DK) standing – who has maintained his position as the most unpopular active politician in Hungary for over a decade.

While the major opposition parties that did not participate in the alliance, far(?)-right Jobbik and green-liberal LMP have been able to maintain, and even marginally improve their 2014 numbers, the five parties that made up Összefogás have lost over a third of their voters, polling at 17% in total (9% for MSZP, 5% for DK, 2% for Együtt, 1% for PM, negligible for MLP), compared to the 26% they were able to scrounge up in 2014. That’s barely enough to beat today’s Jobbik, who at 16% remain the strongest opposition party.

In comes Momentum who, much like Együtt in 2014, and LMP in 2009, strives to build from the center, break the left-right divide in Hungary, and end the corruption of the entrenched political elite. So far Momentum has put on a positive, energetic campaign, with modern, inclusive messages. Their appearance and initial success with the proposed Budapest Summer Olympics referendum was so sudden that Fidesz decided to mobilize their full war machine of government controlled public media and a special division of internet trolls moonlighting as journalists to provoke them into implosion. Momentum’s reaction to such an all-out assault has revealed a dangerous lack of nerve and shrewdness on its leadership’s part. However, even their newly developed confrontational behavior was, for the most part, contained and inconsequential (cursing on live television, storming into the pro-Fidesz online portal Origo’s headquarters), and did not seem to affect their strategic decisions. Then came the choice to run the 2018 elections with the full house of 106 individual candidates. With lackluster messages across the left about the possibilities of a renewed alliance, this strong declaration kills any hope of cooperation in its cradle. Putting aside the fact that centrist parties, by definition, should be the ones most ideologically open for cooperation, this choice seems like a reckless strategic gamble and may have dire consequences for the party’s future. It’s no mistake that party leader András Fekete-Győr lists exactly zero practical reasons that may have led to this decision.

In a voting system that favors strong parties, Momentum’s decision may be the best news for Fidesz since the migrant crisis, as a strong unified force that might challenge Orbán continues to elude the left. The new voting system, implemented by a Fidesz-KDNP supermajority in 2012, has three key mechanics to reinforce stronger parties: The high number of constituency seats, the evaluation of surplus votes, and the method of assigning seats from the parties’ national lists. Constituency seats make up 53% of the seats on the National Assembly (106 out of 199), and are awarded in a first-past-the-post method. The remaining 93 seats are assigned from the national lists. Each voter casts two votes, one for the constituency, and one for the national lists. For a party to get seats from the list, a minimum 5% is needed (10% for two-party alliances and 15% for bigger ones). In 2014, even a minority vote share of 45% meant an almost complete clean sweep of the constituency seats for Fidesz, paving their way for their second supermajority. The next important mechanic is the implementation of surplus compensation votes for the winner of each district. Until 2012, only the losers of the districts could carry their votes onto the national list, meaning that the constituency winner ended up with a number of wasted votes. Since 2012, however, the winner of each district carries every vote that would have been wasted over to their party’s national list. How does that work?

Imagine a district with four candidates, Orange, Black, Red, and Green. 100.000 people voted, with Orange getting 45.000 votes, Black 24.000, Red 19.000, and Green 9.000. Pre-2012, this would mean that Orange wins the district but carries no votes to the national list, whereas Black, Red, and Green get to carry all of their votes. However, the new system allows Orange to carry every vote they did not need to win the district as well, amounting to 40.000-24.001=15.999 votes. This means that the size of the second largest party directly decides how many surplus votes the winner gets. A simple coalition where Black and Red votes are added would leave only 45.000-43.001=1.999 surplus votes for Orange, meaning that while Black and Red still narrowly lost the district, just their cooperation takes away 14.000 extra votes from the Orange national list. For 106 constituencies, the surplus votes gained or lost may very well swing the whole election.

The seat allocation from the national lists follows the D’Hondt method. D’Hondt also favors larger parties and coalitions at the expense of smaller ones, but for the purposes of ease in my calculations I will ignore this effect and pretend that seats are appropriated proportionally from the votes and surplus votes on the national lists. This method thus slightly underestimates the cost of fragmentation for the left.

So what would it take to beat Orbán? By beating I mean to either force Fidesz-KDNP out of government, or at the very least, force them out of a majority. Qualitatively the answer is simple, getting the number of Fidesz-KDNP seats below 50% becomes easier, the more unified the opposition is at the beginning of the elections. That much is obvious. For a quantitative answer we simply need to crunch the numbers a bit. I’ll look into several possible combinations of alliances – irrespective of whether they seem likely to be formed today – and see what the price of anarchy (in this case, fragmentation) is.

If all parties run separately (with the exception of the nominal Fidesz-KDNP alliance), then even the most realistic criteria seem daunting at best. The least unlikely of the winning scenarios is this, (1) Fidesz-KDNP need to get at most 35% of the votes, (2) they must win less than 70% of the constituencies, and (3) none of the opposition parties can end up in the 1% to 5% interval. This scenario already assumes that the second most powerful party is able to reach 20%, whether it is Jobbik or any other party it makes no difference. Keeping Fidesz below 35% seems doable when one considers it polls at 36% in the whole population but becomes far less realistic if we exclude voters without a party preference. 52% of voters with a preference and 55% of voters with a definitive preference would choose Fidesz today. Nevertheless, 35% for Fidesz and circa 20% for Jobbik (its 2014 result) would mean that the left-wing must beat Fidesz by a full ten points. In 2014 Fidesz had a little over 2.2 million voters, reaching a result of 45% against a 61% turnout. Even if we assume that its base has shrunk by an impossible 300.000 in the last parliamentary cycle, a minimum turnout of 65% is required – that would be the highest since 2006 – to keep them below 35%. Moving on to the constituencies, Fidesz captured 96 of them in 2014, amounting to 91%, and that was achieved against a unified left-wing opposition that took all of the remaining 10 with Jobbik and LMP winning none. While a further 19 constituencies were close (Fidesz winning by less than 10 points), even taking all of those would not be enough to prevent a Fidesz majority. Surprisingly, however, the biggest hurdle of all seems to be the last. This is necessary, since any vote on a party that doesn't make it into Parliament is lost. Of the seven measurable opposition parties, only Jobbik and MSZP was able to poll consistently above 5%. LMP see-saws on the edge between 3-7%, DK with roughly 5-8%, with the rest of the race rarely reaching 3%, let alone 5%.

Now suppose that full cooperation on the left is achieved and all six parties (MSZP-DK-LMP-Momentum-Együtt-PM) are joined. Unless the left implodes completely, this would make them at least the second strongest alliance in 2018 (this was true even for the disastrous 2014 election). If we continue to assume that Jobbik will fail to capture any constituencies (which would contribute to a Fidesz-minority), and that Fidesz-KDNP win 70% of them, thanks to their more geographically diverse base, to force them out of a majority one simply needs to beat them in the total number of votes. The 10-point margin required to win in condition (1) disappears thanks to Fidesz losing a massive amount of surplus votes. In addition, condition (2) becomes far more relaxed thanks to the pooling of the votes on the left, and condition (3) disappears entirely, as it seems inconceivable for such an alliance to get below the 15% threshold. Already this may seem like a tall order, but it’s not so ridiculous of an idea as a 10% point difference.

While a grand coalition on the left remains unlikely due to deep-rooted generational rifts between parties, it is less of a stretch to imagine two separate alliances. Ideologically there is little to separate the social democratic parties MSZP and DK from each other. The same holds for the younger and more centrist ones, LMP, Együtt, Momentum, and PM. A dual formation on the left would mend the schism of MSZP that Gyurcsány had created after the lost election of 2010, as well as keep the more Gyurcsányophobic parties safely away from him. However, such an arrangement would actually solve none of the problems that a completely fragmented opposition would face. With MSZP-DK totaling 15% and the centrist formation 13% at the polls, neither formation looks like they would create a strong opposition party, meaning that Fidesz would still be able to retain their surplus votes. Furthermore, two competing formations on the left (especially with the centrist formation largely concentrated in Budapest) would achieve precious little to stop Fidesz from getting 70% of the constituencies. Third, the centrist formation would now have to pass the 15% threshold to get into Parliament instead of the 5% required for a single party, or the 10% required for two-party coalitions. Therefore, this arrangement would still face a 10-point deficit against Fidesz on election day even without a single ballot cast.

Even so, a bipolar idea may still be the best hope for the left. As stated above, they can’t afford to lose a single party to the 5% threshold, and the only way to avoid that is to fully integrate – much like Fidesz was able to do between 1994 and 2010, eating up party after party until they became the only viable option on the right for both the middle-age voters and for the older demographic. In order to present any semblance of such a unified front, and to avoid the pitfalls of marginalization due to the 5% threshold, all of LMP, Együtt, PM, and Momentum need to be integrated into a single, centrist party. There is simply no room in the center for four interchangeable competing parties. Since Gyurcsány is out of the union, this time, such a move has a chance to shake the country from its political apathy in a way that 2014’s Összefogás never really did, likely increasing the turnout for 2018.

Once that integration is complete, and only then, the real talks of a grand left-wing alliance can begin. If the centrist crowd maintains a popularity of at least 10-15% (which seems likely), they have a chance to be the strongest party left of Fidesz, meaning that the negotiations will be largely on their terms, rather than MSZP’s. The center, MSZP, and DK can then run on two or three separate national lists, with cooperation restricted to the district level. To take away Fidesz’s majority, some other party (that may be Jobbik as well) must win in at least 33 of the regional districts. Winning the 10 that was achieved in 2014 and the 19 that were close is a definitive must, leaving only 4 more to go. With LMP in the fold, no infighting on the left, and with Fidesz’s stagnating or even shrinking popularity, this is surprisingly achievable, though it may require some backroom dealing with the left’s archenemy, Jobbik. As Jobbik distances itself further from its fascist roots this too becomes smaller and smaller of a hurdle.

Ever since its 2012 inception, the electoral system has been a subject of constant critique by voices from the left. They claim it favors Fidesz. They are wrong. The electoral system provides the very incentives of cooperation that the left so badly needs. By punishing the smaller parties, it filters out those who are unwilling or unable to compromise. This is a quality that is to be expected from anyone who is claiming to offer an alternative to Orbán’s illiberal regime.

Coming back to the grounds of realism, it seems unlikely that any kind of coalition or alliance would materialize until the 2018 election. The question of how to beat Orbán is therefore completely academic at this point. The real question that the fragmented opposition faces is how to survive 2018 and prepare for 2022. And frankly speaking, that question does not interest me in the least. Whether Momentum crashes and burns on its first election or limps into Parliament, whether LMP, Együtt, and PM continue to split into even more parties, or whether – God forbid – a new party is organized with the ambition of solving the left-right divide, I just don’t care. And not just because it gives us 4 more years of Orbán.

If this pointless, ego-based, inconsequential bickering in any way indicates what the country would become under their leadership, then I think every moderate still living in Hungary best make peace with Orbán and quickly marry a relative of their local Fidesz-MP. That, or move while they still can.

Update: László Botka, the PM candidate of MSZP, the largest party on the left, the person who has been the most open to a compromise, has announced he would step out of the race.

October 2, 2017.

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