Yet, Tisza is sure this time will be different, partly because it’s fielding local star László Gajdos as its main candidate here. Hungarians cast two votes — one for the national party list and another for their preferred candidate in single-member district constituencies. Of the 199 seats in the National Assembly, 106 are filled by winners of the district races, while the remaining 93 seats are distributed among winners of the party lists. And Gajdos, a highly popular director of the Nyíregyháza Zoo, is running on both.
Even pro-Fidesz observers like Mráz Ágoston Sámuel, director of the research consultancy Nézőpont Institute, expect Tisza to win more national list seats “because opposition voters are very much concentrated in the cities, especially in Budapest. From the party list, we estimate Fidesz will get about 40 seats,” he told POLITICO. But the real fight will be in the districts, and Fidesz will still win the majority there, he said.
Tisza disagrees. Péter Lajos Szakács, one of the party’s candidates in Nyíregyháza, told POLITICO he’s confident the party will win. “In Nyíregyháza, we will win with a landslide. I’m in the second district and Gajdos is in the first. He’ll have a historic win. With me, what I can say is that right now, I’m in a tie with my opponent. But we’re working hard, so we can send him into retirement, and he can then spend time with his grandkids,” he said confidently.
But local supporters POLITICO spoke to weren’t quite so convinced the electoral struggle in Nyíregyháza is over. “I wouldn’t dare make any predictions,” cautioned Benji. However, most of them did say they thought the election outcome would be close. And that in itself suggests Fidesz isn’t likely to scale the heights it did in 2022.
Ultimately, in the districts outside Budapest, much will depend on whether Fidesz can once again mobilize its supporters and get out the vote. In the past, the party was highly efficient in doing so, but in a video of party workers gathered for “warrior training” in October, Orbán was seen fuming about the state of the party’s databases, complaining they were in bad shape.
Even so, according to 76-year-old retail store owner Júlia, soothsaying might be a mistake. Unlike most of her contemporaries, Júlia thinks Hungary desperately needs change: “I don’t want to say who I’m voting for. My main criterion is that my kids and my grandkids get to stay here. And that they can make a living, and I don’t think that will happen unless things change. Life will then get easier here,” she mused.
In the meantime, with political tensions running high, her business is being impacted. Gesturing to the empty street in downtown Nyíregyháza, she said: “Everything is so quiet. We can really feel it. People are saving up their money. They’re scared of what the future will bring.”