The 2014 Budapest Assembly election was held on 12 October 2014, concurring with other

local elections Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Local'' (comics), a limited series comic book by Bria ...

in Hungary. Voters elected the

Mayor of Budapest The Mayor of Budapest (, ) is the head of the General Assembly in Budapest, Hungary, elected directly for 5-year term since 2014 (previously municipal elections were held quadrennially). Until 1994 the mayor was elected by the General Assembly. ...

, and the mayors of the 23 districts directly, while 9 seats in the assembly were distributed proportionally, taking into account votes cast for losing district mayoral candidates. This was the first election held under these rules, previously all seats (except for the Mayor) were elected with a party-list method.

Background

Regarding the Budapest Assembly election, the

Fidesz Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (; ) is a national-conservative political party in Hungary led by Viktor Orbán. It has increasingly identified as illiberal. Originally formed in 1988 under the name of Alliance of Young Democrats () as ...

-dominated

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 repr ...

amended the electoral law in June 2014 after an announcement by Fidesz politicians

Lajos Kósa Lajos Kósa (born 14 March 1964) is a Hungarian politician, who served as Mayor of Debrecen between 1998 and 2014. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1990. Kósa was appointed one of the four Vice Presidents of the Fidesz party in 2007, a ...

and

Antal Rogán Antal Rogán (born 29 January 1972) is a Hungarian economist and politician, who serves as Minister of the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office. He served as Mayor of Belváros-Lipótváros (fifth district of Budapest) from 2006 to 2014. On Tuesda ...

, half a year before the local elections took place. The amendment, according to analysts, was formed according to the current interests of the ruling party, since it forced cooperation between rival opposition parties ( MSZP, DK and

Together ''ToGetHer'' (, aka Superstar Express) is a 2009 Taiwanese drama starring Jiro Wang of Fahrenheit, Rainie Yang and George Hu. It was produced by Comic International Productions ( 可米國際影視事業股份有限公司) and directed by Linzi ...

– PM) in order to win district mayoral positions (and thus Budapest Assembly seats). Only parties with at least 12 mayoral candidates could submit a compensation list. According to the Political Capital analysis think tank, this meant that the three largest opposition parties would have had to give up 7 districts, where all three of them run their own underdog candidate against the plausible Fidesz winner, while in the remaining 16 districts they cooperate and distribute among themselves in a ratio of 5–5–6. The Political Capital and the opposition parties criticized the Fidesz government, for amending the electoral law according to the current political situation months before the election, thereby reducing legal certainty and violating the ruling party's own adopted

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

. The final result of the election (see below) finally justified the criticism.

Index.hu Index is a Hungarian news website covering both Hungarian and international news. In 2018, it was the most visited Hungarian website with an average of 1.5 million daily readers. While most of the website's articles are written in Hungarian, Ind ...

calculated that under the old electoral system (party-list proportional rules) the Fidesz would have had only 16 mandates (15 + the mayor) instead of the 20 it won, therefore, the government party majority would not have been behind Mayor

István Tarlós István Tarlós (; 26 May 1948) is a Hungarian politician who served as the mayor of Budapest from 2010 to 2019. He also served as the mayor of the 3rd district of the city (Óbuda-Békásmegyer) between 1990 and 2006 as an independent candidate ...

that way in the 33-member General Assembly of Budapest.

Mayor

Incumbent Mayor

was reelected with 49.06% of the votes.

District mayors

Distribution of compensation seats

Compensation seats were distributed using the

D'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is an apportionment method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in proportional representation among political parties. It belongs to ...

Notes

References

{{Hungarian elections 2014 in Hungary 2014 elections in Europe Local elections in Hungary History of Budapest