On Átlátszó, András Hont and Krisztián Szabó comment on a map of Hungary with the 26 battleground constituencies where the fate of next parliamentary elections will be decided.

They explain that both sides will likely be supported by nearly 50 per cent of the voters, and thus get a roughly even share of the 98 seats in Parliament to be filled from the parties’ national lists.

Thus, the key to the result will be found in the 106 individual constituencies. Based on the results of the previous two elections, Hont and Szabó believe that both sides can be fairly certain to win 40 of them.

The remaining 26 are more or less evenly spread across their map and will constitute the main battlegrounds next year.

The opposition’s main weakness is its heterogenous character, whereby many voters critical of the government will find it hard to vote for certain individual candidates whose ideals they cannot readily espouse.

On the other hand, Hont and Szabó write, for the same reason many undecided voters will find it easier to vote for the ideologically less compact opposition than for the strongly ideologically-tinted government side.

They believe even small unpredictable changes in public mood may tilt the balance towards one side or the other.

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