What will happen to Hungary’s extremely unpopular battery plants? The issue could become a hot potato for Tisza too

Local conflicts, arising from “residents’ increased sense of vulnerability and opposition to the battery industry” could have contributed to a dwindling of public support for the outgoing ruling Fidesz party, the Republikon Institute said in a recent analysis released on Tuesday.

If there’s a battery plant, Fidesz get less

Before the April 12 parliamentary election, Republikon conducted a survey in 20 towns and cities with battery plants, noting that “one of the most significant moments of the election campaign was the publication of an official report earlier in 2026, concerning the Samsung plant in God”, north of Budapest, suggesting that the plant had emitted carcinogenic and foetotoxic substances in amounts exceeding the permissible limit by a hundred times.

According to the analysis, support for Fidesz had decreased in all surveyed localities between 2022 and 2026, in three quarters of the cases the decrease was below the national average. The decrease was greater in small settlements, such as Ács, Alsózsolca or Sóskút, where Fidesz’s loss of popularity was 4-5 percentage points below the national average, the report said.

Republikon noted, however, that in the surveyed localities the ruling party had originally had a smaller support, and said that “it cannot be clearly established that the local battery plant-related case alone resulted in a shift to the extent that would have substantially overridden the general support trends.”

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