Who Does the Mixed Electoral System Benefit? The 2026 Parliamentary Elections in Hungary

Following Hungary’s 2010 parliamentary election, the Fidesz government, as part of a comprehensive restructuring of the country’s constitutional system, fundamentally modified the electoral system adopted in 1989. While retaining the previous mixed electoral system type, it introduced a number of relevant changes and the majority elements were significantly strengthened. For all these reasons, it is particularly interesting to examine how the changes have affected the proportionality of the system and to detect any possible paradoxical consequences in the last three elections. It is also interesting to consider what (un)expected changes, the upcoming parliamentary election scheduled for April 2026 will bring, given the changed party political landscape which appears more competitive than any previous contest. With the rise of the Tisza Party and its leader, Péter Magyar, Fidesz and Viktor Orbán are facing a challenger unlike any they have encountered in nearly the past twenty years. According to the majority of public opinion polls conducted in 2025, Tisza currently enjoys higher levels of support than Fidesz. Some of the amendments of 2011 benefited whichever party happened to be the largest at the time (which, from 2010 onwards, was Fidesz for nearly a decade and a half), while other changes were specifically advantageous to Fidesz itself. In addition to its high level of popular support, these “Fidesz-tailored” elements of the electoral system contributed to the party’s landslide victories in the parliamentary elections of 2014, 2018, and 2022. The primary aim of this paper is to present and assess how the Fidesz-tailored electoral system may influence the outcome of the April 2026 parliamentary elections. In particular, the paper examines the following issues: • how the winning party – whether Fidesz or Tisza – has been able to benefit from those elements of the electoral system that favor the largest party, with special attention to the so-called winner’s compensation mechanism; • how gerrymandering in the delineation of single-member constituencies has affected electoral outcomes; • the impact of parties failing to reach the parliamentary threshold on the allocation of parliamentary mandates; • whether Fidesz has been able to maintain its exceptionally high level of support (approximately 95%) among voters living abroad who do not have a registered residence in Hungary; • and how proportional the overall election results have been, taking into account that mixed electoral systems (including the Hungarian one) are capable of producing both highly disproportionate and highly proportional outcomes.