Poll gauges higher voter satifaction with former Budapest mayor than successor

Budapest residents expressed a higher level of satisfaction with the work of Istvan Tarlós, the city’s former mayor, than with incumbent Gergely Karácsony’s efforts so far, pollster Nézőpont said citing a recent survey on Saturday.

Forty-six percent of an 800-strong sample chose Tarlós in their answer to the question “who has been the best leader of Budapest so far”, while only 26 selected Karacsony.

Authors of the Nézőpont report noted that Karácsony was a popular politician “whose image is not damaged by current issues” but warned that “popularity may not lead to satisfaction and automatic re-election”.

Forty percent of respondents said they would like to see Karácsony reelected, while an equal 40 percent said they would not. Forty-eight percent said they liked Karácsony and 42 percent said they did not – the same ratio as reflected by the results of last year’s mayoral election.

Karácsony’s unchanged popularity is “interesting” in view of the city management’s “passing few spectacular or important decisions”, the pollster said.