Abstract:

In the post–communist transitional era, Hungarian elections show diverse results among various areas, raising the question if there are firmly embedded differences between some parts of the country. In the light of the election returns between 1985–2006, it appears that there is a more or less definite pattern. This study will examine the 2006 legislative returns and compare the results with the previous trends and especially the 2002 data, testing the validity of the findings indicating the presence of some fairly constant regional standards of voting. As a main indicator of past trends we use mostly the territorial (party) lists which provide more accurate picture of voting preferences that individual districts which in runoffs carry an indirect distortion of voters’ primary preferences by other considerations.2 For a deeper analysis of the recent 2002 and 2006 elections, we will compare the first run individual district voting outcomes, as they give the more accurate picture of the voters’ real preferences.

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