The 2018 Hungarian national elections

The eighth parliamentary elections since the 1988–90 regime change were held in Hungary on 8 April 2018. In a development probably without historical parallel in any sizeable democracy, the same party, Fidesz, won two thirds of the seats for the third time in a row in a national election. This achievement is lessened somewhat by the fact that this perennial winner is formally an alliance of two parties; but one of the two, the Christian Democrats (KDNP), has had no noticeable popular support on its own for the last 15 years or so. To put these Hungarian results into context: in the past 200 years, a single party has only twice obtained two thirds of the seats in a British general election, while such a majority has never been recorded in Germany, Italy or Japan, despite the enduring dominance of a single party (or party alliance) in all these countries in the years since the Second World War. Such a thing has never occurred in any of those free, competitive elections held since 1990 in the former communist countries – not even in tiny Montenegro, which has been governed by the same party since 1990. The practical importance of this exceptional result is further heightened by the fact that in Hungary a two-thirds majority in the only chamber of parliament means that any law can be changed – and any clause of the constitution amended – by a one-off decision. In this sense, the 2018 Hungarian parliamentary elections have given unlimited power to a single party for a third time. As Figure 1 shows, it is unusual, but not unheard-of, for a single party to receive around 50 per cent of the vote in a free and fair election – the Maltese Labour Party, quite exceptionally, gained 55 per cent of the popular vote in 2017. But it is only in authoritarian regimes that we are ever likely to find one party winning two thirds of the seats. Single parties in government are even less able to change constitutional rules: the only democracies that have a population of over half a million and still let a single legislative house change constitutional rules on its own are found where that chamber is elected under proportional representation. This raises the inevitable question about the democratic nature of Hungary’s political system. I will not devote space to this question here, because many observers have already noted the partisan bias in the electoral rules, media coverage and oversight bodies, and the extreme inequity in the public resources committed to the election campaigns of the various parties (e.g. OSCE/ODIHR, 2018).