Electoral Behaviour in Fidesz-Hungary

Political Enqniry in International Relations

Electoral Behaviour in Hungary: What Kind of External Factors Affect Certain Voters When They Come to Put Their ‘X’ on the Ballot Paper?

Abstract
There are endless number of researches on electoral behaviour, but they tend to miss an important fact when it comes to analysing post-communist states: they have not fought for their democracy and have experienced the transition into it negatively. This makes voters to look at democracy and its electoral system completely differently from those in the West, yet they are analysed based on the same socio-economic factors. Therefore, I find it important that – instead of the collective, majority ruled data on electoral behaviour – we ask people, what their reasons behind their votes are. Politicians are starving for information about what people want, what they think, because they need to represent those to win elections. They cannot do that based on pure numerical data, they need to ask their citizens. Similarly, we need to ask people about their motives, it does not come through any generalised, mass socio-economic dataset. It differs person by person, and even if a qualitative interview-based research will not allow us to generalise, this is a much better method to be used in order to demonstrate the importance of the individual, unique motives behind each vote. To verify this, I have chosen to analyse interviews with Hungarian voters from different backgrounds, who have participated in the 2018 Parliamentary Elections, where Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party got re-elected with 2/3 absolute majority for the third time. This analysis has led a surprising combination of lack of engagement with the preferred party’s actions, with absolute all-time engagement to it.


Introduction
This research focuses on the following: apart from socio-economic factors (level of education, family-status, place of living, age, class, occupation and income) what external factors may affect certain Hungarian voters to (not) vote for the so-called ‘illiberal’ Fidesz-party, which have acquired its absolute majority for the third time (Hungarian National Election Office, 2017; Grzebalska and Pető, 2018). I will do so by conducting qualitative semi-structured interviews, involving four voters who have participated in the latest, 2018 parliamentary elections. The reason for this is that I have discovered that the existing quantitative literature cannot capture the variety of specific individual reasons behind votes, they can only show the ‘bigger picture’ (the collective trends) based mostly on socio-economic factors, mentioned previously. They usually analyse electoral behaviour without inquiring about those voters’ reasons and motives, and work mainly based on their Western centric socio-economic data, that cannot fit countries which have previously belonged to the Soviet bloc (Anderson, Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2003; Fidrmuc, 2000; Tóka,1998; Benoit, 2005). I have found that, what really matters on the day of elections is what voters really think, that is why politicians are hunting public opinion and needs (which is getting harder to read), to find out what they need to represent to get elected (Mair, 2009).
I had a question come across when I have started this project: why not only Fidesz voters? During the process, I have realised then I could have not demonstrate how the ideas of Fidesz voters, who have lived under the communist system differ from those who did not and experienced only this existing democratic system of Hungary, which I now find crucial and targeted to be my next research’s focus point (Fidesz voters born in or before 1970, so were old enough to understand politics in the communist system).
Finally, the main research question is then: other than socio-economic status, what do certain voters in contemporary Hungary truly think, therefore what does externally affect their ‘X’ on the ballot paper? I will go after the interviewee’s thoughts on their major decision-factors by asking them about whether they have been affected by certain issue-responses of a party, by personal ideology, economic concerns, benefits or vouchers that they are eligible for, by personal relationships with the party, any manifesto, leaflet, campaign or a personal experience, and whether it was a strategic vote. What this research aims to find is therefore that certain voters do not vote as they do simply because of their socio-economic situation, but they have individual experiences, needs and personalities behind as well, what cannot be exposed in mass-data analysis. We can only perceive those by asking them.

Literature review
First, it is important to understand what the traditional literature on party-voting says to be able to understand the singularity of Hungary. Then, in comparison we need to look at specifically what the literature on the Hungarian electoral system says, because the mainstream literature focuses on a collective, generalised European lens that is dominated by those Western states who have not experienced the Soviet system, whereas Hungary and its voters very much did so, therefore they have a very different relation to and experience with democracy as such (Anderson, Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2003; Fidrmuc, 2000; Tóka, 1998; Benoit, 2005).
A traditional, Western literature on party-voting builds on those countries where there was no Soviet involvement in governance, where there was no socialism after the end of World War II. They build on a responsibility hypothesis, claiming that voters vote based on the government’s performance, vote for if they see developments that favours them, and against if they are unsatisfied. That is rewarding and punishing a government (Ahlquist et al., 2018; Fidrmuc, 2000; Hobolt, Tilley and Banducci, 2013; Lippényi, Maas and Jansen 2013; Nannestad and Paldam, 1994). Which is not the case in the Eastern European countries including Hungary, where democracy did not come about as a result of public struggle, where there has been no long lasting positive experience with democracy (Anderson, Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2003; Fidrmuc, 2000; Tóka, 1998; Benoit, 2005). In Hungary, there is no such punishment for Fidesz’ reforms what has been revealed above (Ahlquist et al., 2018; Fidrmuc, 2000).
Twenty-eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I should find evidence on Kiss’s argument, that strategic voting is increasing over time, so interviewees must have logical reasons based on what they expect to benefit them, behind their votes (2015:131). Most importantly for this research, there has been some rudimentary finding on that government manipulates voters by gender- and family policies to strengthen its counter-hegemony and also, there has been increase in corruption at elections (Grzebalska and Pető, 2018; Kostadinova, 2009). Not to mention the unfair modification of electoral laws on governmental campaign, allocation of campaign funds and media restrictions by the Fidesz-government for their own benefit to manipulate electoral behaviour (OSCE ODIHR, 2018).
We can conclude that the existing literature analyses electoral behaviour based on voters’ pure socio-economic ‘fact’ data, not by asking them what their motives, reasons, tensions are, which actually matters when it comes to voting, what voters think, that is what politicians are striving for, opinions, needs, thoughts of voters because that is what matters when they give an ‘X’ on the day of elections, not where they come from.

Methodology
This research aims to find that apart from socio-economic factors, there are specific, individual reasons behind certain voters’ party preferences that cannot be measured by generalised mass-data analysis and can only be perceived by asking voters one by one. For this purpose, I will use the method of semi-structured interviews, whereby participants are invited via social media advertising to participate voluntarily. The reason for my method to be used is what we could see from the literature review, that the socio-economic data and Western centric research cannot demonstrate the specific individual reasons behind a vote. This, in the end resulted four completed interviews, each with a citizen who have voted in the 2018 General Parliamentary Elections.
I have found that this method is weak in what it is strong: although does not allow me to conclude any general assumption about the whole Hungarian population, therefore gives only a very limited and focused result; yet is better to capture individual reasons behind certain votes, what the general ‘bigger picture’ would miss as it relies on the data of the majority of the cases and on socio-economic factors. No other, minority voices are heard in case of quantitative analysis Hungary (Burnham et al., 2008, pp. 123-124; Halperin and Heath, 2012, pp. 253-285).
In my analysis I have compared those points of the interviews with each other which were answers to the same question. The aim of this is that apart from a single-analysis of each, it gives an even better understanding to compare different interviewed voters to each other, how their reasons differ and why. Even though I was hesitating on including non-Fidesz voters because I have been suggested that excluding them would further narrow down and deepen this research, eventually an LMP voter has been involved in order to discover, whether in the case of these interviewees her socio-economic factors made the difference or it can be rejected. This is important to reveal for comprehending which, the socio-economic quantitative, the personal thought-based qualitative path, or maybe both are influential on electoral behaviour; what we could not get if we only look at the three Fidesz voters (as they are nearly from the same age- and residence group, which was accidental). Nevertheless, I have interrogated the interviewees on their socio-economic data for the same reason, to get confirmed or rejected on the usefulness of my method.
This research may involve ethical issues on inconvenience or discomfort of either the interviewer or the interviewee due to the topic or the other party’s inappropriate behaviour at the interview. Also, there will be a risk of overreporting of those participants who abstain claiming they voted, when the reality might not be the same (Kostadinova, 2009). Finally, there is a risk that the translated transcription may have misheard data, or that the interviewee was not telling the truth when answering some questions. Yet, for the purpose of this analysis, I have found the advantages more promising than the relevance of these backlashes.

Analysis
Interviewee A was the only non-Fidesz voter participant in this research. She was not interested in politics that much to quest for about parties’ manifestos, policies or economic goals, she was only intended to change the current governance when it came to elections. She has differed in all socio-economic respects from the other interviewees: in age, location of living, occupation. Her contrast with the other interviewees may have confirmed the generalised mass-research data, that the younger, urban population is more likely to be against the far-right regime, whereas the older, rural resident generation is more likely to support Fidesz (Lippényi, Maas and Jansen 2013); but it is important to add the fact that she was the only one who did not experience the communist system. These together may have led to such anti-Fidesz perspective, in her case.
Interviewee B was very much interested in political news and was concerned with economic development. Due to her occupation as an auditor, she was immensely up-to-date on company related policies and taxation, strongly bearing out her party preference. She was the only interviewee somewhat engaged with the governing party, which is ‘…although slowly, but doing good to the Hungarian economy’, according to her.
Interviewee C on the other hand, has shown very little interest in politics, declared to be informed only because ‘…it is coming from the newspaper and the radio every day’, as something unavoidable. She felt that she was not affected by the support and benefits that comes from the government because those are targeting the younger generation, who ‘need extra to build up a home and to start a family, standard living is not enough for additional hungry mouths, but we, the old, the retired people would need so much less, only as much to keep up our living standard as if we were still working, but we get nothing’. I understood a certain upset here. Yet she was concerned with Fidesz, because it worth more for her to keep a government that already ‘packed its pockets enough, … [because] a new government would start it again’; than the fact that she feels that her years in retirement are not safe and guaranteed.
Interviewee D said he was ‘…of course interested in politics as long as it affects the Hungarian economy’. Similar to interviewee C, he was not impressed with the party’s values and direction, yet agreed with their immigration policy and seen no better option to vote for – for the same ‘new leadership would start to fill their empty pockets, whereas Fidesz have already filled theirs enough’ theory.
In Table 1 we can compare the four interviewees’ responses to each other, whereby we can see that in all four cases there was a tendency to vote for the same party on both, the single-member district list and the party-list. Likewise, none of the interviewees declared to have any kind of personal relationship to any member of any party and said being not active in politics apart from reading the news and voting. Also, none of my interviewees have been visited by any party-representative personally, that could have influenced their party preferences. This may confirm the drawback of interview-based research, where picking four random people will not always confirm the ‘bigger picture’ what politicians or other researches may see, if there is accidentally no such particular voter within the interviewees. In a contrast, whereas for the young and urban interviewee A the main driver behind her vote was to defeat the majoritarian power of Fidesz, for the other three older, rural living Fidesz voters the main point unanimously was the economy and its development.
Apart from interviewee C, both the LMP voter and the Fidesz voters have criticised the government on different levels, but all of them said there is not much chance for any kind of change. Here I see a certain acceptance of ‘their bad situation’, that needs to be criticised by them, but none of them are willing to do any effective action for change, either because it is ‘risky’ to do so or because there is no really a better option, they believe; but they have certainly not voted because they are engaged with the party they have chosen. In addition, although all four interviewees declared to be to some extent interested in politics, but not being actively involved in it. This most probably means that none of them are unsatisfied with the existing system that much that would make them taking action. These finding have confirmed Kiss’s argument on the increase of strategic voting, because all interviewees found that their party preference at the election was at least to some extent strategic (2015:131). On one hand, the LMP voter’s strategy was regime-change without party engagement. On the other hand, all Fidesz voters (interviewee B, C and D) have voted for Fidesz at the elections because they are in power for a significant time now and a change in leadership would re-start the development and ‘stealing’ by the representatives, as they said. Therefore, a main point behind all three Fidesz-votes was to keep the existing system going because changing it would do more harm than good. Also, they all had various concerns about Fidesz, one felt that her retirement will not be guaranteed, two of them said they are ‘stealing’ or the system is not perfect. Yet none of these points overruled their concern that they need to keep the Fidesz government because a new government would destroy the development that has been built up, to start everything from scratch, and would start to ‘fill their empty pockets’. For all of them it is the best way if Fidesz – who already have stolen enough money to be happy with it and who has commenced to build up a system of development – keeps doing what it does because ‘…it is slow, but it is development what they are doing’ (Interviewee B). By this they verify that Hungary as a post-socialist country needs different analysis from those in the West, because here there is no punishment for the government by those voters who have lived under communism before (Ahlquist et al., 2018; Fidrmuc, 2000).
Within these interviews then, we could see a confirmation of the influential nature of socio-economic status (particularly age and location of residence) on electoral behaviour, that was meant to be rejected. But age as a factor here can be associated with experiencing (or not) the communist system, which then is relevant on accessing democracy and therefore party preferences. Still, in addition, the hypothesis that there are other external factors influencing the outcome of party choice has also been verified by those interviewed, therefore we can declare a partial, but significant success in this research. This then demonstrates the need for an interview-based analysis of Hungarian (as well as post-Eastern bloc) electoral behaviour, as a result of that quantitative (socio-economic based) data cannot uncover all factors behind individual votes. For the participants of this research these external factors influencing their vote have been mainly concerns about economy and the strategy that they must keep the existing system and government going because a new government would first, stop this slow but constant development to build up a new system of their ideas; second, because a new government would have ‘empty pockets to fill with stolen money’ and the long-running Fidesz government has ‘already filled its pockets so that it does not want more’. This was true for Fidesz voter interviewees, but for the single LMP-voter (who has differed in that she has not experienced the communist Hungary and lived in urban area), it was even more purely based on a strategy, where the only thing that mattered was to vote against Fidesz, and to vote for those with the best chance to get the most votes of the opposition. These are the interviewees’ thoughts behind their ‘X’, that cannot be concluded from any Western-centric social-economic, generalised collection of data, it varies person by person.

Conclusion
In a conclusion, we can now see that even though socio-economic factors (age, sex, location of living, occupation) do make a difference in electoral behaviour of those interviewed, voters have their own thoughts, needs and interests behind it as well that needs to be analysed.
Interviewed Fidesz voters were not necessarily engaged with the party’s values, rather seen the strategy of keeping the existing regime their best option, because they have believed that a new government would restart ‘stealing money’ as well as the development of the economy. The opposition voter – who alone did not experience the communist system – similarly build on a strategy, voted for the strongest opposition party (not necessarily engaged with), LMP, which was seen as the best chance for regime-change. For the purpose of this analysis I had to include an opposition voter, to be able to represent how all voters of all parties from all backgrounds interviewed here have shown little or no engagement (with one Fidesz voter exception) with the party’s values that they have voted for. Instead there is a tendency to vote strategically to keep or to change the status quo regime of Orbán. It has confirmed the increase of strategic voting on this narrow level of four participants, as well as the need for the interview-based research on electoral behaviour in Hungary (Kiss, 2015). Quantitative socio-economic data may show trends but cannot represent the true reasons of individuals behind their vote (Anderson, Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2003; Fidrmuc, 2000; Tóka,1998; Benoit, 2005).
This research has confirmed that those Fidesz voters who have experienced the communist system have a different approach to democratic parties. Therefore, there is a need for further research on those Fidesz voters particularly born in or before 1970, having experienced both systems.


Table 1

Interviewee A
Interviewee B
Interviewee C
Interviewee D
Sex, age, location of living, family status, level of education, occupation
Female, 21, urban, alone, secondary education completed, student
Female, 63, urban, alone, higher education completed, white collar worker
Female, 58, rural, in family, secondary education completed, white collar worker
Male, 64, rural, in family, secondary education completed, blue collar worker
How much are you actively involved in politics?
interested, reads the news, used to joined demonstrations, now it is too risky to do so
interested, reads the news daily on both domestic and international politics, but not actively involved in anything
not interested, sees the news and hears the radio so has an idea what is going on, but not particularly going into it
not active apart from voting, interested only as much as it affects the economy, nothing else is important
Which party did you vote for in 2018?
LMP on both lists
Fidesz on both lists
Fidesz on both lists
Fidesz on both lists
Was it affected by certain issues they responded the best to?
not at all, does not read about the party that deeply
yes, Fidesz takes the economy in a good direction, a new government would break it all down and start from scratch, Fidesz is doing slow but constantly better
no, she sees that the party just works on how to ensure all powerful party-members get a stable position in the state as heads of companies, governmental departments or any other major position
he agrees with the policies on immigration, but finds it to be a marketing catch mainly
Was it affected by your personal ideological engagement?
to a limited extent LMP represents the most of her views
not at all, if it would be the case, she would have joined the party a long time ago
to a limited extent it has affected her vote in that she is against immigration because ‘we are enough here’ and Fidesz represents her view on it the best
he used to identify himself with the party, but not anymore since their values have changed, yet there is no better party as for now
Was it affected by economic factors?
no, because she does not know what other parties if come to power could do for her the question of economy comes after the question of democracy and this is not a democracy yet where economy could be debated
Fidesz leads an internationally recognised development, Hungary develops the best and fastest compared to other Eastern European states, Fidesz develops the economy, which is the main point for her when it comes to vote
there is good and bad in the contemporary economy, the main point is that they are talking but do nothing, there must be good things in it, but she did not know what exactly
absolutely, main point is the economy, Fidesz have got the money they wanted already, so will not want more, if a new party would come to power, they would want the money again
Was it affected by their manifesto or certain policies?
not at all, the only goal is to change the current regime, LMP has not been in power to write policies
not at all, the only point is to keep the economic development going
she does not believe in any manifesto or campaign text, speech, prefers the immigration policy and family support policies but disagrees with the pension age-limit policy
he has decided way before any campaign or manifesto, does not matter what they would say they do not keep their word
Was it affected by what the government gives to you?
those benefits do not affect her in this age yet, therefore this does not give a reason for her to vote for Fidesz, she is sure there would be some support for families and pensioners anyway
there is more and more financial support for starting a family, for housing, for grandparents to stay home with the grandchildren, now that the party stayed in power and reached development can focus on families and healthcare more, it could not be done all at once, now that there is development, families can have more children that will lead to more school and more job for teachers, before they needed to focus on the industry to establish jobs for parent-to-be-s, based on her auditor job she is aware on all taxation that makes workers’ situation better, the vouchers have just ceased to push companies to pay that amount in the salary, so that the worker gets the same but now with tax, she personally is not affected by any voucher, GYES [maternity leave] or CSOK [governmental loan for family housing], she is not eligible for those
was not affected by any support or benefit (GYES, CSOK) as has not been eligible for those, have not received any vouchers that are now being cancelled
yes, it is connected with the economy, but supporting benefits, vouchers are not relevant to him, he is not eligible, and he thinks benefits for the old have eliminated
Was it a strategic vote?
absolutely, voting for the opposition that had the best chance to win, if it was any other opposition-party, she would have vote for them
strategic for keeping up the development, a new party would go back to zero and start again just to do differently
strategic in terms of that it does not worth it to change the regime because new regime means a new party that is freshly hungry for money
to an extent, it is strategic because they have stolen enough money already and do not want more, a new party would start stealing again
Was it affected by anything else?
LMP was seen as the best chance of the opposition to win more seats, they are not really good either, but the best chance to change the Fidesz-regime, the Momentum-party was more convincing for her but had less chances, LMP is sympathetic because the party-leader’s children go to the same private-school as she did instead of the governmental education, no representative of the party knocked on her door personally
Fidesz is not perfect either, they have some lacks and unable to develop all sectors at once, but do it slowly, step by step, they are making taxation more transparent, there is no need for surveillance or punishment, instead market depends on being a good taxpayer, that ensures purchase, nothing else apart from economic development have affected her vote, no representative of the party knocked on her door personally
was not affected by anything else, no representative of the party knocked on her door personally
he has not been affected by campaign leaflets or party promises and no representative of the party knocked on his door personally
Do you have personal relationship to any member of the party?
no
no
no
no
What do you expect form the next elections in 2022?
Fidesz will keep its majority, maybe not with 2/3
wishing for Fidesz-majority because she wants economic development and they are doing it well, no need nor chance for regime-change
will not be a miracle, there will be no major change nor a new perfect party will born from nothing, the most important thing is the further support of the young, the retired would be as well but the young needs extra for building a home and a family whereas a pensioner would only need a basic standard of living that they could live when they were working
Fidesz will keep staying in its absolute power, there is too high cult of personality around Orbán; but also he have always conformed to what is there, if it was socialism or if it is democracy, the only thing what matters that someone should give promises that they actually deliver, nothing else matters, who or which party it is
(the table includes key parts of the interviewees’ thoughts on the questions)

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