Parliamentary elections were held in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

on 9 April 2006, with a

second round The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each ...

of voting in 110 of the 176 single-member constituencies on 23 April.

Dieter Nohlen Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An exp ...

& Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p 900 The

Hungarian Socialist Party The Hungarian Socialist Party ( hu, Magyar Szocialista Párt), commonly known by its acronym MSZP, is a centre-left social-democratic and pro-European political party in Hungary. It was founded on 7 October, 1989 as a post-communist evolution ...

(MSZP) emerged as the largest party in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the r ...

with 186 of the 386 seats, and continued the

coalition government A coalition government is a form of government in which political parties cooperate to form a government. The usual reason for such an arrangement is that no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an election, an atypical outcome in ...

with the

Alliance of Free Democrats The Alliance of Free Democrats – Hungarian Liberal Party ( hu, Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége – a Magyar Liberális Párt, SZDSZ) was a liberal political party in Hungary. The SZDSZ was a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrat ...

(SZDSZ). It marked the first time a government had been re-elected since the end of Communist rule.Hungary Socialists win new term
BBC News, 26 April 2006 To date, this is the most recent national election in Hungary not won by Fidesz-KDNP, and the last in which the victorious party did not win a two-thirds supermajority in parliament.

Electoral system

The unicameral National Assembly (''Országgyűlés''), the highest organ of state authority, initiates and approves legislation sponsored by the prime minister. A party had to win at least 5% of the national vote (based on the total of regional list votes) to form a parliamentary faction. The National Assembly had 386 members, elected for a four-year term in a mixed system: 176 members in single-seat constituencies by a modified two-round system, 152 in multi-seat constituencies by

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a subset of proportional representation electoral systems in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through their position on an electoral list. They can also be u ...

(using territorial lists) and 58 members (using a national list) to realize semi-proportional representation. The election took over two days. On 9 April elections took place in every constituency, both single-seat and multi-seat. In order to get elected into a single-seat constituency, a candidate needs to receive more than 50% of the vote; in the 2006 elections, the victor received more than 50% of the vote in 66 of the 176 single-seat constituencies. There was another election in the remaining 110 single-seat constituencies in the 2nd round, in which all but the top three candidates (and every candidate reaching 15%) from the 1st round are excluded. Usually parties formed alliances between the two rounds and withdraw many of their 3rd place candidates and call for supporting the allied party so the winning candidate of the 2nd round will receive more than 50% of the vote. However, this process was not automatic, but grounded by negotiations. The multi-seat elections also took place during the first round of voting. 146 of the 152 seats were filled using

closed-list Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some in ...

proportional representation. The remaining 6 were added to the national list calculation. The country was divided into 20 regions for the multi-seat elections with varying numbers of members per region. Where a party won more members in a region than it merited, the surplus votes were deducted from the total it received in the second round. Correspondingly, a party that received fewer seats than it merited had the shortfall votes added to its total in the second round. A further 58 (plus 6 more not elected from the multi-seat constituencies in the first round) extra members were elected using a national list, which voter could not vote for directly, but indirectly through constituency and regional votes, in order to achieve a more proportional result.

Nomination

Before the election the parties needed to be registered by the National Electoral Office. After registration the parties had the right to collect references. Each candidate had to collect 750 references in their district. If one party collected the required number in two districts (in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...

8, Pest 5 and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén 3) in a county, then it could present a list in regional constituencies. If a party had at least seven regional lists, it could present a national compensation list. 17 March was the last day when a party could be registered and a list or a candidate could be registered. By 28 February, 49 parties had sought registration, and 45 were registered by the National Electoral Office.

Campaign

On 10 April the two parties of the governing coalition MSZP-SZDSZ (

and

) announced their alliance for the second round. The Socialist Party withdrew three of their candidates in favour of the Alliance one, and the Alliance withdrew their remaining 55 candidates (all of which had finished third), and called on its voters to support the Socialists. The leaders of the two parties ran a common campaign between the two rounds. The opposition was not united. The Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) which hit the 5% threshold contrary to the polls and expectations made it clear that they would not support

Viktor Orbán Viktor Mihály Orbán (; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian politician who has served as prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has presided over Fidesz since 1993, with a brief break between ...

Fidesz Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (; hu, Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Hungary, led by Viktor Orbán. It was formed in 1988 under the name of Alliance of Young ...

party. Orbán tried to get their support by declaring that he resigned from Prime Minister candidacy, and sought a compromise candidate, Péter Ákos Bod, but the MDF held on to their independency; thus they did not withdraw their 3rd place candidates. However, some MDF candidates did not agree with this, and withdrew in favour of Fidesz.

Opinion polling

Results

References

Notes

External links

Országos Választási Iroda National Electoral OfficeOnline coverage of the elections, with the latest poll results
Index.hu {{Hungarian elections

Elections in Hungary Parliamentary election