POLLS – Fidesz support down 12 points, Jobbik getting stronger in November – UPDATE

Budapest (MTI) – Support for ruling Fidesz dropped by 12 percentage points among all voters in November, a poll by Median published in the online newspaper hvg.hu on Wednesday showed.

Poll by Median

At the end of October, before the US introduced an entry ban on six Hungarian officials and a proposal for an internet tax was announced, Fidesz had 38 percent support. This dropped to 26 percent by the end of November, representing an unprecedented loss of more than 900,000 potential voters, hvg.hu said. Fidesz saw an increase in popularity of the same size, the largest monthly increase ever, in 1992, the paper said.

The weakening of support for Fidesz has resulted mainly in an increase of respondents with no party preference, from 31 percent to 36 percent of all voters, and growing support for the opposition Socialists, from 8 percent to 12 percent.

Support for Jobbik also increased and returned to 15 percent, a level previously recorded during the spring, the poll showed.

The proportion of those who said they would certainly cast their votes at an election increased to 52 percent from 41 percent two months earlier, the paper said. Only every second Fidesz voter said they belonged in this group, it added.

Less than half of Hungarians said that things were going in the wrong direction in October and this increased to 68 percent in November. This view was even shared by every sixth Fidesz supporter. At the same time, only 31 percent assessed the government’s work positively in November, as against 45 percent in October, hvg.hu said.

Poll by Ipsos

Among all voters Fidesz lost 5 percentage points to stand at 25 percent while Jobbik gained one point to 14 percent, according to the poll conducted in early December. The opposition Socialists came third with 11 percent, unchanged from November. Green party LMP lost one point to stand at 3 percent while leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) added one point to stand also at 3 percent. Support for the Egyutt (Together) party went down one point to 1 percent, the poll showed.

Among decided voters, support for Fidesz dropped three points to 45 percent, whereas it went up three points for Jobbik to 24 percent. The Socialists in this group gained three points to stand at 18 percent, LMP stood at 5 percent, DK at 4 percent and Egyutt at 1 percent.

In number terms Fidesz has lost altogether 800,000 supporters over the last two months, the pollster said. Support for the governing party weakened in October among core supporters including mainly young people, middle-aged and middle-class voters, and in smaller towns. Voters moving away from the party last month were in lower social groups, the elderly and villagers, Ipsos said.

The proportion of voters who keep their distance from political parties further increased from 30 percent in October to 35 percent in November and 39 percent in December, it said.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters