Is there a chance for a government change in April?

Fully seventy percent of respondents in a recent Századvég poll said Péter Márki Zay, the united opposition’s prime ministerial candidate, would not be able to beat Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the April 3 general election, the government-close think-tank said on Friday.

“The majority of Hungarians has a negative view of Marki-Zay’s personal qualities of a political dimension,” Századvég said.

Fifty-three percent of respondents did not consider Márki-Zay “strong or firm”, while 56 percent were unconvinced by his Christian and conservative credentials. Fifty-nine percent said he “does not place Hungarian people first”.

Sixty-two percent of respondents “do not consider him a straightforward or honest politician” while only 30 percent said he was “one of us”,

the pollster said.

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“It is obvious that optimism on the left wing, following Márki-Zay’s victory in the [opposition] primary, has now ebbed,” Századvég said, suggesting that several remarks the candidate had made were “not in line with the values of Hungarian voters”.

The think-tank insisted that Márki-Zay preferred health services to be operated on a for-profit basis, adding that 72 percent of respondents to its survey had expressed disagreement with such an idea. Seventy-four percent of respondents also rejected a proposal attributed to the politician “to privatise hospitals and outpatient clinics”.

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