Probing Citizen Constraints on Democratic Decline: Understandings of Democracy in a Contested Election

To what extent do citizens prioritise liberal democratic constraints on elites in contested elections held under conditions of democratic backsliding? This paper examines how voters’ understandings of democracy evolve over time using a three-wave panel survey conducted around the April 2026 parliamentary elections in Hungary. The election follows four consecutive mandates of Fidesz rule marked by sustained executive aggrandizement and unfolds amid heightened contestation linked to the strong polling of the opposition Tisza Party. The study focuses on how citizens prioritise different dimensions of democracy, distinguishing between liberal constraints on executive power (such as judicial independence and checks and balances) and more majoritarian or outcome-oriented conceptions of democratic governance. The panel design captures voters’ priorities before the campaign, during the election, and after the vote, allowing for an assessment of whether electoral contestation clarifies and sharpens democratic understandings. The post-election wave further enables an analysis of winner–loser dynamics, examining whether electoral success leads opposition supporters to de-emphasise liberal constraints in favour of governing discretion. By tracing within-individual change, the paper contributes to debates on citizen resistance to democratic decline by identifying when liberal democratic commitment operates as a stable preference among voters or to what extent it proves contingent on political power.