MSZP plummets in the polls
September 29th, 2017In light of the latest poll figures, a liberal commentator thinks MSZP frontrunner László Botka’s bid for the post of Prime Minister is doomed, and Fidesz already appears the easy winner of next year’s elections.
In an unsigned comment on its website, Magyar Narancs writes about ‘two tough blows” the Botka camp suffered on Wednesday afternoon. The first was a Median public opinion poll, rating the MSZP at 7 per cent of all potential voters and 9 per cent of committed ones. In the latter category, Jobbik is supported by 15 per cent of respondents, while the LMP is measured at a surprisingly high 7 per cent. Fidesz supporters added up to 55 per cent. The game is over, Magyar Narancs writes, Fidesz is in for another smooth victory. As for the Socialist Party, the column continues, it looks ‘like a racing car in which someone has forgotten to lift his foot off the brake’.
In a second blow to Botka and his team, party Chairman Gyula Molnár announced that the Socialists ’are open to discuss proposals to put DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány on the joint left-wing electoral list’. Ever since Mr. Botka stepped forward as frontrunner last November, he has consistently refused to run together with Mr. Gyurcsány. He justified this on the grounds that a large proportion of Hungarians feel antipathy towards Gyurcsány, because of the way he mismanaged the country as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2009. With him, Botka has consistently repeated, it is impossible to win over the further hundreds of thousands of voters without whom the Left cannot be a match for Fidesz. Now that the MSZP has repudiated Botka’s stance, Magyar Narancs asks how long he can remain on board.
In a further blow, Tamás Lattmann, a well-known professor of international law revealed on ATV, that opposition parties in fact agreed to appoint him as their joint candidate for Prime Minister, before Mr Botka ‘stepped in’ to impose his own candidacy.