Hungary Election 2018: Voting has closed, this is what happened today

The 2018 election of Hungary went down between 6 am and 7 pm on 8 April. There was a record-like turnout, which could change everything. Let us take a look at the main events of the day.

The turnout could influence the election in Hungary, as according to statistics, only 2-2.4 million people cast their votes for the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat party led by Viktor Orbán. There are approximately 8 million citizens in Hungary with a right to vote, so the remaining 6-5.6 million voters either trusted other parties with their choice or did not partake in the election at all.

The opposition’s situation is complicated, as the strongest opposition party, Jobbik, is willing to form a coalition only with the green LMP. However, LMP’s best choice is to make it into the parliament barely. The leftist Socialist-Párbeszéd coalition and the Democratic Coalition would gladly take over the current government, but without Jobbik, they do not stand a strong chance.

Therefore, there is a lot at stake, as the Orbán-lead government has a good chance to stay, but it is unlikely that they will have a majority in parliament.

In this case, they should form a coalition with one of the opposition parties, but this was ruled out beforehand. However, the situation might still change, we have seen examples for this in the world before.

Apart from slight technical issues, the election went down smoothly, and even though there were some harmless incidents, there were no significant disruptions. The turnout was really high compared to the results of the elections 4 or 8 years ago. The final results are not yet in, but it is already for sure that a lot more people cast a vote than in 2010 or 2014.

So what are we waiting for, actually? According to election law, results can only be published when all polling stations are closed. This might take a while, as a lot of residents from the countryside have applied to vote in the capital city, but in some places, voters have to wait up to three hours to cast their votes.

This means that even though most stations closed at 7 pm, there is still one or two that will possibly close around 9 or 10 pm.

There is actually a long wait for the final election results; we might even be kept on the edge of our seats until Tuesday. Why? The re-applications and the thousands of votes cast by Hungarians abroad slows down the counting of the votes.

The end-results of the day will be of great importance, of course, but they will not be final. The wait is long, as we have already said, anything can happen. It is possible that Fidesz will have a strong win, it is also possible that they will barely win, but it is also possible that the opposition will win, which will throw the country off balance.