A by-election was called in Tolna County’s 2nd electoral district for Sunday, 12 January due to the death of Fidesz MP Árpád János Pótápi, who passed away in October 2024. This was the first time an election with considerable significance was held in Hungary since the European Parliamentary and municipal elections in June 2024.
As expected, the candidate for the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition won the election. Thus, Dr Krisztina Csibi will take seat of the deceased Potápi in the National Assembly in Budapest.
What is even more promising for Fidesz is her margin of victory. MP-elect Csibi won 63.7 per cent of the vote. Three years prior, MP Pótápi won ‘only’ 62.44 per cent. Fidesz’s Krisztina Csibi beat the second place finisher by 44.5 points (!), while Potápi had won by 35.44 in 2022. Since the Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk Mozgalom), a party to the right of Fidesz, was the only party in this by-election to run a candidate with national name recognition, Party Vice Chair Dóra Dúró, Csibi’s landslide victory is all the more impressive. Dúró got 19.18 per cent of the vote.
‘MP-elect Csibi won 63.7 per cent of the vote. Three years prior, MP Pótápi won “only” 62.44 per cent’
The Democratic Coalition (DK), the centre-left party of Former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, came in third place with 11 per cent of the vote.
Fidesz’s improvement in the region compared to 2022 is quite promising, given that in the last parliamentary election the party managed to secure a constitutional supermajority for the fourth time in a row; and won the popular vote by 19 points.
While turnout was low, at just 33.5 per cent, that is customary in by-elections in Hungary.
Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party, which is regarded as Fidesz’s most viable challenger since 2010, did not even field a candidate in this election. Magyar explained away his decision by claiming that ‘the role of the National Assembly is negligible at a time when the administration is constantly governing through executive orders’. However, if Tisza had popular support in the region (which it probably does not), it still would have been a better call to actually nominate a candidate, and use their hypothetical gain compared to 2022 as a show of force.
‘Today was a very big victory for all of us, this election was a matter of honour…No matter what we are being told from people next to their champagne glasses in Brussels, I think that the people of the 2nd District in the county of Tolna have sent a message to Brussels that yes, they are voting for continuation, for the continuation of the work of János Árpád Potápi,’ MP-elect Krisztina Csibi said in the video uploaded to her Facebook speech, celebrating her victory.
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