Hungarian voters are just days away from electing a new parliament. The country has, of course, become known for its democratic backsliding under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – being the only EU member state not classed as ‘free’ by Freedom House. Ahead of the election, we thought we’d take a look at how Hungarian elections work, the damage Orbán has done to Hungarian democracy and the electoral alliance hoping to re-democratise the country.

The Hungarian Voting System

The 199 members of the Hungarian National Assembly are elected using a mixed-member majoritarian voting system, with voters having two votes. 106 members are elected by First Past the Post in single-member constituencies and the remaining 93 seats are decided by a closed list PR system in a single national constituency.

This may, at first glance, sound like the system we use in Scotland and Wales. But, the proportional seats are neither allocated in a fully compensatory manner, as per Germany, nor simply added on, as in Italy. In addition to counting party list votes, votes for losing constituency candidates and surplus votes for winning constituency candidates are also added to the party list totals. Ultimately, the proportionality of the system is fairly limited and there is a strong bias towards the largest party – Fidesz-KDNP won 67% of seats on 49% of votes last time.

For the party list seats, a 5% threshold applies to single parties, with it rising to 10% for alliances of two parties and 15% for electoral coalitions of three or more parties. However, parties representing the various national minorities of Hungary are exempt from the thresholds, able to take a seat on just 0.27% of the vote – a party representing German Hungarians was able to take a seat this way in 2018. Minorities that do not reach the threshold get to send non-voting spokespeople instead.

This will be the third election using the current voting system, with a different mixed-member system being used until the 2010 election.

Parties and Government

Since 2010, Hungary has been ruled by the right-wing populist Fidesz-KDNP government of Viktor Orbán. Officially, Fidesz and the KDNP (Christian Democratic People’s Party) are two separate parties, but they have been in a close alliance for nearly 20 years and so de facto function as a single party. They have held more than two-thirds of seats for their entire time in office.

Fidesz was originally a pro-western liberal party established during the fall of communism – the name is, in fact, an abbreviation of Alliance of Young Democrats, with membership originally restricted to the under 36s. Other than a brief period in the early 2000s, Orbán has been leader of the party since 1993 and has gradually shifted it in an illiberal direction. In power, the party has used their two-thirds majority to rewrite the constitution – weakening checks and balances, undermining the judiciary and election authorities, and taking control of much of the media. They have also extensively targeted minority communities – particularly Muslims and LGBT people. Indeed, this election coincides with a controversial referendum that aims to weaken LGBT rights.

In an attempt to end Orbán’s ‘soft autocracy’, most opposition parties from across the political spectrum have teamed up to form the ‘United for Hungary’ alliance. The current largest such party is Jobbik – whose history is somewhat the opposite of Fidesz’s. Originally a far-right party, Jobbik has reformed itself into a mainstream conservative party in the last few years – even applying to join the moderate European People’s Party (though scepticism over the speed of the change led to the application being rejected).

The rest of the United for Hungary alliance is of a more centre-left persuasion – the strongest components of which are the Democratic Coalition, an officially liberal party who sit with the social democrats in the European Parliament, and the more conventionally liberal Momentum Movement. The traditional centre-left force, the Socialist Party (MSZP), and two green parties are also part of the alliance, though with fairly low levels of support.

Polls indicate a close race, though with Fidesz still ahead. Opposition parties hope to exploit Orbán’s historic closeness to Putin, but they are still fighting an uphill battle and face many obstacles designed to hamper their chances.

Of the 43 countries most often considered to be within Europe, 40 use some form of proportional representation to elect their MPs.

The UK stands almost alone in Europe in using a ‘one-person-takes-all’ disproportionate voting system. If we exclude the authoritarian state of Belarus – “Europe’s only remaining outpost of tyranny” – France is the only other European country to use a ‘one-person-takes-all’ system (the Two-Round System).

Proportional voting systems used for lower house national elections in Europe

Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union, Parline Database, https://data.ipu.org/

What type of proportional system do European countries use?

Party List PR

Party List proportional representation is the most widely used form of PR in Europe – 28 countries use it to elect their MPs.

In Party List systems, constituencies are bigger than under First Past the Post and voters elect a group of MPs, rather than a single person. In this system, voters get MPs roughly in proportion to how many people voted for each party.

Party List systems differ in the extent to which citizens can choose which individuals get elected. In ‘closed’ list systems, parties decide who their candidates are and voters can only mark their support for a party (some point out that first past the post is a closed party list of one) Parties decide which candidates fill the seats they have won in the election.

In ‘open’ list systems, each party presents a list of candidates, and citizens can choose which candidate to vote for (or – in some systems – they can choose to vote just for the party if they want). A vote for a candidate is counted as a vote for that candidate’s party.

Semi-open list systems are a mix of the above: voters have more choice in who they can vote for, but – generally – parties can decide the order in which candidates are elected.

Single Transferable Vote

Ireland and Malta use the Single Transferable Vote (STV) to elect their representatives.

As with Party Lists, voters elect a small group of representatives in bigger areas, like a small city or county, as opposed to a single MP in small constituencies as we do in Westminster.

STV gives voters maximum choice on who to vote for. Each elector has one vote. Voters number candidates in order of preference, with a number 1 for their favourite – they can rank all candidates or just vote for their preferred candidate.

To get elected, a candidate needs to reach a set amount of votes. This quota based on the number of seats to be filled and the number of votes cast (read our explanation to find out more about how votes are counted).

If your favourite candidate already has enough votes to win or stands no chance of winning, your vote is transferred to your next choice based on how you ranked candidates.

Under STV, voters can choose between candidates from the same or different parties, which incentivises parties to stand candidates who reflect the diversity of society. Electors can also vote for independent candidates, without worrying about ‘wasting’ their vote.

Mixed Member Proportional Representation

Germany elects their representatives with Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP). Which is similar to the Additional Member System (AMS) in the UK.

MMP is a mix of Westminster’s First Past the Post system and Party List PR – the goal is to provide a proportional parliament but also keep a single local MP.

Voters have two ballot papers. On the first is a list of candidates who want to be the local MP. Like a Westminster election, the voter marks their preferred candidate with a cross and the candidate with the most votes wins and gets a seat, even if most people didn’t vote for them.

On the second ballot paper is a list of parties who want seats in parliament. Each party publishes a list of candidates for these elections, a vote for a party is a vote to make more of their list of candidates into MPs. Seats are allocated in proportion to the votes a party received in the election, taking into account how many ‘first vote’ seats they obtained.

Other systems

The remaining countries (Andorra, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Monaco, San Marino and Ukraine) combine a number of voting systems – mainly First Past the Post and List PR. These tend to be less proportional for a number of reasons.

In Italy, for example, the distribution of the List PR seats does not take into account seats won under the First Past The Post section. While in Greece, the party with the most votes receives a bonus of up to 50 seats, in addition to those they are entitled to on a proportional basis. This makes it likely that a party that receives 40% of votes would achieve an overall majority of seats in the Hellenic Parliament.

Conclusion

The UK is unique among European countries in terms of its electoral system – and not in a good way. It’s the only democracy that uses the outdated, one-person-takes-all First Past the Post system. Westminster is even unique within the UK, as the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, as well as the Northern Ireland and London Assemblies all use forms of proportional representation.

While the List PR systems commonly used in Europe can create parliaments that closely reflect the opinions of their countries, there is often a weaker constituency link.

This is why the ERS favours the Single Transferable Vote: this system enhances voter choice and guarantees a strong link between MPs and voters, while also distributing seats in parliament in a way that is fair and reflects how people voted. Rather than throwing votes on the electoral scrapheap as ‘wasted’, STV helps ensure every vote counts and people’s voices are heard.

It’s time that we caught up with the rest of the world and changed the way we elect our parliament so it finally reflects public opinion.

Sign our petition for a fair voting system in the UK

The three-time two-thirds majority winning political party Fidesz has been able to reshape Hungary’s political institutions because of the 2010 election, in which it won 53% of the vote, and won its first two-thirds majority.

The process by which you can get two-thirds of the seats on just over half the vote was created from the rather unusual electoral system developed after the end of the cold war. Hungary’s current system is a modification of this original design.

The original system was born of a compromise reached in the negotiations between Hungary’s Communist Party and the opposition during the roundtable talks that heralded the start of the transition to democracy.

The Communists had favoured a Westminster-style voting system, believing that their successor party, the Socialists, would do well with their higher visibility and organisation. The Communists had also used first past the post, in theory (of course, only candidates from one party could run) and so did not want to depart from this experience.

The opposition parties were split but came to favour a mixed-system, but mixed systems can vary widely in their functioning, depending on the details.

Hungary’s original post-communist system was based on a system of three ‘tiers’. In the first tier, 176 seats were elected using a French-style two-round system. In the second, 152 were elected from regional PR lists and finally, 58 were allocated from lists to compensate parties that fell below their proportionate share.

In order to qualify for compensatory seats, a party had to run candidates in a sizeable number of constituencies.

The system was designed to institutionalise the six-parties that sat at the roundtable into a permanent six-party system. But, like all great plans of mice and men, it didn’t work out as they hoped. The high level of candidates you had to stand to qualify for compensatory seats meant that small parties soon fell away and new ones couldn’t enter. By 2002 only 3 parties entered parliament, and two of those – Fidesz and the Socialists held 95% of the seats.

After re-election in 2006, a leaked, speech of the Socialist PM to his party caucus circulated in which, littered with curse words, he was quoted as saying that they had lied about the country’s economic situation.

“We lied morning, night and evening…. There aren’t many choices. That is because we have f****d it up. Not just a bit, but much…. We must change this f*****g country.”

Trust in the Socialist Party hence collapsed overnight, and with few other options, support drove its way to Fidesz, and the then-nascent far-right party Jobbik.

Fidesz’s two-thirds majority gave it enough seats in the Hungarian parliament to have carte blanche on changing Hungary’s constitution, which it did unilaterally, without any discussion with the opposition or mention of this in its election campaign.

Hungary’s voting system was always an attempt by politicians to design an electoral system with a result in mind. As the other five parties at that roundtable learnt, choosing an electoral system because it would help your party at one point in time, is no guarantee that it will in future. Just as we don’t let politicians in the UK design their own constituency boundaries, neither should we let them choose their own voting system.

Citizens’ Assemblies around the world have proven that, given the time and space, normal people can make well-informed decisions on complicated political matters. Rather than a roundtable of party grandees, or a Hobson’s choice of a referendum, it should be citizens that take the lead in reforming Westminster’s broken voting system.

Read what happened in Hungary’s recent election in part one of this two-part blog

Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has dominated Hungarian politics since 2010. On Sunday, its dominance was confirmed, as it won its third two-thirds majority in a row, winning 134 of 199 seats. In most European countries, a hattrick of landslides would be a sign of massive popularity for the ruling party.  But Fidesz has managed to get its impressive result on 49% of the vote.

The election was criticised by the OSCE’s election monitoring mission for its intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing, an unusually strong critique for the international organisation. The election was notable for a blending and overlap of state and party resources, with the government launching ‘public information’ campaigns which used similar rhetoric to Fidesz’s campaign.

This is the latest in a series of criticisms of the Orban government. Since 2010 Hungary has often been cited as a prime example of democratic backsliding in which newly democratised countries fall back into undemocratic behaviour. The democracy monitoring organisation, Freedom House, has seen Hungary fall from their best possible score in terms of political and civil rights, 1 out of 7, to a 2.5 in 2017, putting it below the more troubled new democracies of Romania and Bulgaria for the first time. And scores of domestic and foreign observers have critiqued undemocratic behaviour by the government.

Fidesz is aided by the Hungarian electoral system, which it changed for the 2014 election. The system is a mixture of 106 Westminster-style first past the post seats and 93 seats assigned proportionally from lists. But, the list seats are not handed out to compensate for the disproportionality of the Westminster-style seats, as they are in Scotland, Wales and London, but just added on. This means that a party that has already got more seats than its share of the vote should allow from the Westminster-style seats, would get still more from the party lists.

There are definite signs of gerrymandering in the constituency seats designed after Fidesz’ first landslide in 2010. Additionally, while many countries with similar systems let votes in constituency seats for losing parties be added to their totals for calculating the list seats, to make the system more proportionate, Hungary is unique in doing this for the surplus votes for winning candidates.

The first run of this electoral system in 2014 saw Fidesz win 66.8% of the seats for 45% of the vote (133 of 199). The 2014 election result was more disproportionate than any post-war British election according to the Gallagher Index, a measure of disproportionality.

2018 saw a slightly less disproportionate victory for Fidesz – 67.3% of seats on a higher vote percentage at 49% (134 of 199), but the disproportionate results continue to speak for themselves. Fidesz won 91 of the constituency seats, almost 86%. The relatively easy to gerrymander Westminster-style elections and a natural tendency towards dis-proportionality has been used by Fidesz to create an electoral system biased in its own favour.

Around the world, political leaders look to Westminster’s electoral system when they want to take power away from voters. It is time that we stopped being an inspiration for anti-democratic forces and instead became an example of how democracy should be done.

This is part one of a two-part article. Find out how Hungary got its electoral system in part two!