The Left losing ground
June 5th, 2024A commentator wonders if the Left is on its way out of Parliament.
Latest opinion polls show Fidesz in a winning position with around 47 percent of decided voters supporting it. Péter Magyar’s brand-new TISZA party is second with 26 percent, while the left-wing alliance led by the Democratic Coalition is backed by a meagre 10 percent.
On Válasz, Péter Magyari asks whether Hungary is about to follow Poland’s example, where the left-wing parties were squeezed out of Parliament in 2015. The Democratic Coalition has never even approached the 20 percent threshold since it seceded from the Socialist Party in 2011. Nevertheless, it has been the strongest component of the opposition and portrayed itself as the only alternative to PM Orbán’s government. This year, however, its place has been taken by Péter Magyar’s TISZA party, moreover, some pollsters predict that the latter may get as much as 30 percent of the votes in the European elections on Sunday. If that happens, and if the Democratic Coalition and its allies sink below 10 percent, Magyari predicts the left might fail to even reach the 5 percent threshold in the parliamentary elections in two years’ time.