Russian Aggression in Ukraine as a Critical Juncture for Electoral Competition: The Case of the Parliamentary Elections in Hungary

This paper addresses the importance of understanding certain international crises as the critical junctures of domestic election processes. Some international crises can be as powerful as an external shock altering the domestic election dynamics. They can create alternative electoral outcomes, based on the reactions of the existing political actors to those crises. Our research on the 2022 parliamentary elections in Hungary shows that the Russian aggression in Ukraine (RAiU) should be understood as such an external shock, to which the political rivals in a competitive authoritarian context had to immediately craft new campaign strategies within a few days’ time. The external shock gave an equal chance to each rival —i.e., the government and opposition—in coming up with a new strategy and change the tide to its favor. We argue that the ruling Fidesz-KDNP alliance boosted its electoral support since it created a more consistent link between the RAiU and its traditional populist agenda that protects ‘Hungarian national interests against the enemies.’ On the other hand, the United Opposition experienced a sharper fractionalization and electoral decline than what was normally expected because it failed to create a consistent link between the RAiU and the multiple agendas that it formerly advocated. Our research is based on the content analysis of 571 online media news combining both the pre-RAiU and post-RAiU period of electoral competition. 269 of these news come from pro-government and 300 of them come from oppositional/independent sources. We compare the results of our content analysis with the evidence provided by the changes observed in public opinion surveys in the pre and post-RAiU period.