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By Andrei Zhirnov, Michele Scotto di Vettimo & Susan Banducci (all University of Exeter).

How close are the top British politicians to the electorate?

Democratic elections are meant to ensure politicians promote the interests of voters – keeping them in office when they do and voting them out when they do not. Standard political science wisdom says that an astute politician will not advocate or make unpopular policies at the risk of being kicked out of office or otherwise jeopardizing their and their party’s political survival. However, the recent developments in British politics seem to suggest that it is not the case, and, at least according to the popular narrative, the current government has moved quite far from the public.

The data collected by a team of university researchers at Exeter, Münster, VU Amsterdam, Birmingham, and Rome – collectively known as PRECEDE – can help us assess how well the leading UK politicians represent the British electorate and the policy similarity we should expect in the near future.

In July 2022, around the resignation of Boris Johnson and the subsequent Conservative leadership contest, the PRECEDE consortium launched an online tool (Who Is Your Leader?) that allows internet users to answer a few questions about their attitudes to the political system and policies. In the end, they see their position in the political landscape along with those of the Conservative leadership contenders and other prominent contemporary and historical British political figures. Politicians and portal users are placed along two axes: the traditional left-right scale, which represents economic and cultural policies, and opposition to the political establishment. Politicians’ positions were estimated using a survey of experts in British politics.

Figure 1. Distribution of Users from the “Who Is Your Leader” Tool.

 

 

Figure 2. Distribution of Users that voted for the Conservative Party in 2019.

 

The tool also allows the researchers to take a bird’s eye view of the electoral landscape and see where most potential voters are sitting. Our early analyses of this data indicate a visible gap between the users of our tool and the Conservative leadership. Most of the users are further to the left than the Conservative party leaders. The distance is shorter for Rishi Sunak, but even he is quite far from the majority of the electorate.

If we focus only on the respondents who said they had voted for the Conservative Party in 2019, the distance becomes, as expected, smaller. Nevertheless, even in this case, the Labour leadership is almost as close to many Conservative voting users as the Conservative leadership.

This result is consistent with a YouGov study conducted around the same time as our data collection and a more recent one (October 20-21). Both report a lead for the Labour Party. In mid-August, 28% of decided voters intended to vote Conservative, and only 19% as of the 21st of October. The spatial voting approach, which assumes that the voters are more likely to vote for the parties closer to them spatially, seems to reconcile our observations about the policy landscape and vote intentions quite well.

However, something is puzzling about this current distance on the policy landscape: not long ago, in 2019, the Conservative party won a landslide, and it is hard to believe that it could be that far from the electorate at that time (or was it?). We have come up with a few possible explanations without giving any definitive answers.

1. The pandemic and the cost of living crisis have left many people poorer, and even more, with a realization that the government needs to offer more support to those in economic distress. Consequently, voters have moved further to the left.
2. The key issue of the 2019 campaign – the relationship between the UK and the EU – underpinned the attractiveness of the Conservative Party’s policies at the time but has lost its salience, and voters have drifted away.
3. Voting is driven by affective support for a party label and specific candidates at least as much as voters’ policy attitudes. The parties occupied roughly the same quadrants of the policy landscape during the 2019 election as they do today. However, the respect for the “Conservative” label and the likeability of their leaders was much higher in 2019 than now.
4. Tool users are systematically different from the electorate– they are more liberal. During our estimation procedure, we applied sampling weights to try and bring the distribution of user positions closer to the voting-eligible population. However, this cannot make our sample perfectly representative.

At this point, we have more questions than answers and hope that the outcomes of the new Conservative leadership contest and the next election will shed some light.

 

 

The PRECEDE Consortium has just published its tool for Italy, the Navigatore Populista: https://navigatorepopulista.it 

The tool consists of two dimensions (the axes of the political landscape). The horizontal axis summarises the statements that distinguish political “left” from political “right”, and the vertical axis differentiates between “populist” and “non-populist”. We have labeled the poles of the axes using keywords that are common when talking about politics. To position the parties on these axes, we administered a survey among academic experts. The survey included the same questions that we ask you in the tool. We aggregate these experts’ responses about political parties into their positions on our landscape in the same way as the users’ responses. Additionally, the tool also includes the positions of the party leaders, allowing users to compare parties and leaders – a unique feature that VAAs normally do not offer.

An overview of the party and leader positions can be found here: https://osf.io/z32sn/

 

The PRECEDE Consortium is proud to present its latest Voting Advice Application, the Party Leader Tool “Who Is Your Leader”. The tool consists of two dimensions (the axes of the political landscape). The horizontal axis summarises the statements that distinguish political “left” from political “right”, and the vertical axis reflects the attitudes towards the roles of the elites and the public in government (pro and anti-establishment). We have labelled the poles of the axes using keywords that are common when talking about politics.

A team of experts from the University of Exeter was responsible for placing the party leaders on the statements. The survey included the same questions that we ask you in the tool. We aggregate these experts’ responses about political parties into their positions on our landscape the same way as the users’ responses.

The tool includes the positions of the two candidates in the final round of the leadership contest of the Conservative Party, Liz Tuss and Rishi Sunak. In addition, we also placed the most prominent contemporary and historical party leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson.

The tool addresses the ongoing political debate in Great Britain and offers voters new insights in British politics.

The Electoral Dynamics of the Hungarian Elections 2022

By Jan Philipp Thomeczek, Endre Borbáth, Alberto López Ortega, André Krouwel, Norbert Kersting, Kata Benedek

 

Introduction: Finally a Chance for the Opposition?

On Sunday, the most unpredictable Hungarian national election since 2006 will take place. After 12 consecutive years of Viktor Orbán and Fidesz majorities, the opposition has a realistic chance of approximating or even surpassing Fidesz’ vote share. Six opposition parties joined forces in the “United for Hungary” electoral coalition. During their primary elections, opposition voters elected a single candidate to face Fidesz in each of the 106 single member districts and united behind the prime minister candidate, Péter Márki-Zay. Mounting a centre-right challenge aimed to convince disenchanted Fidesz voters, Márki-Zay represents a centre-right position within a polyphonic big-tent opposition alliance. The six political parties of “United for Hungary” (UH) come from strongly different political camps: the radical right (Jobbik), centre(Momentum), centre-left (MSZP), left (DK), and ecologism (PM, LMP). As our analysis of the structure of party competition based on PRECEDE data shows, the parties of the opposition alliance are kept together by their strong anti-establishment, anti-Orbán stance.

The Orbán government prepared a referendum on legislation related to ‘child protection’ to confront the alliance in the campaign. The referendum is set to take place simultaneously with the election. The suggestive questions are widely considered as homophobic, as it seems impossible to reject them. This plebicscite seems to lack integrity in different areas, if one would apply the criterium of other referendums. Given the overlap between the referendum and the elections, gender issues became a key issue of the campaign. However, this suddenly changed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war has forced the Orbán government to change its strategy of fighting the campaign on gender. 

After 12 years of investing in a close alliance with Russia, the policies of the Fidesz government came under scrutiny after Russia invaded Ukraine. Those policies include extending the Paks nuclear power plant with Russian loans, hosting the Russian backed International Investment Bank (often seen as a Trojan horse of Russian intelligence operations in Europe), regular Putin-Orbán meetings, and the increasingly close business cooperation with the Russian elite. With NATO and EU alliances closing ranks in solidarity with Ukraine, Orbán partly reversed his government’s uncritical stance on Russia and identified a pro-peace, pro-neutrality position as the electorally least harmful alternative. Meanwhile, the “United for Hungary” alliance consistently represents a political position more closely aligned with the NATO and EU countries against Russia. In the last month of the campaign, the war became a “super-issue”, crowding out the coverage of other issues in the domestic press.

 

The Positions of the Hungarian Political Parties and Coalitions

Party Expert Position Survey (PEPS) Hungary

Where are the most important Hungarian parties and the new oppositional coalition “United for Hungary” located ideologically? To position the political parties, the PRECEDE project conducted an expert survey among Hungarian researchers who specialised in Hungarian politics. Since experts had to select the parties they wanted to place, the number of responses per party and issue differs, with around 30 placements for the biggest parties. The party positions were identified using the median of the expert placements, as it is less strongly influenced by outliers than the mean. Each of the statements was then assigned to the dimensions of interest. To identify the party positions per dimension, the mean of all statements assigned to the dimension was calculated, as frequently used by Voting Advice Applications based on a two-dimensional space, including other PRECEDE tools. We recently developed several Voting Advice Applications for other countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, and France, using a similar method. 

 

Cultural and Economic Issues

Figure 1 shows the distribution of party positions based on the two most salient dimensions of European party politics, an economic left-right dimension and a cultural/societal GAL-TAN (Green Alternative Libertarian – Traditional Authoritarian Nationalist) dimension. As the dimension on European Integration aligns well with the GAL-TAN dimension, we decided to combine the two dimensions for simplicity, as other Voting Advice Applications such as EU and I have previously done before.

Two aspects of the Hungarian political landscape become apparent by looking at Figure 1. First, the political competition on the economic dimension is relatively centrist. All oppositional groups are somewhat centre-left, thus in moderate favour of a “strong state”. Momentum, part of the liberal ALDE European party association, takes the least leftist position within the UH coalition. Fidesz-KDNP takes the most market-friendly positions, with still relatively moderate positions. Overall, the economic dimension is structured by many valence issues, where parties are rather concerned with the way and intensity an issue needs to be solved instead of its general direction. This is also reflected in economic statements from the pre-selection where all parties were “on the same side” (e.g. increasing the minimum wage or increasing the wage of civil servants). Nevertheless, there may be a discrepancy between the expert assessment and official party communication for some issues.

The second main conclusion drawn from Figure 1 is that political competition is strongly polarised along the GAL-TAN dimension. While all UH coalition parties except for Jobbik, plus satire party MKKP, are located in the GAL quadrant, Fidesz and right-wing populist newcomer Our Homeland are clearly in favour of TAN positions. Jobbik is located somehow in between, quite distant from its other UH coalition partners. By looking at Figure 1, one may wonder why ideological clearly different parties such as Momentum and Jobbik would officially team up in an electoral coalition. The answer to this question can probably be found in Figure 2. 

Figure 1. Political Landscape of Hungary based on an Economic and a GAL-TAN Dimension.

 

Pro vs Anti-Establishment

In Figure 2, the vertical axis is the same as in Figure 1. The horizontal dimension now summarises statements dividing parties into a Pro- and Anti-Establishment dimension. Those statements relate to topics such as anti-elitism, and national-specific political conflicts about the government’s concentration of power (e.g. influence on the selection of the cultural and scientific elite, independence of state media, anti-corruption measures and autonomy of municipalities). The positions of the political parties on this dimension show clearly that the primary purpose of the United for Hungary alliance is to defeat Fidesz. All UH parties are united in their anti-government stances, including Jobbik. The non-UH opposition, in contrast, is divided. While MKKP is strongly anti-government, Our Homeland takes more nuanced positions. Nevertheless, even Our Homeland is located on the anti-government side.

Figure 2. Political Landscape of Hungary based on an Anti-/Pro-Establishment Dimension and a GAL-TAN Dimension.

 

European Integration

During the last decade, researchers have observed growing democratic backsliding and the transformation towards an illiberal democracy in Hungary, reflected the many conflicts that the Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orbán, provoked with the European Union. From a Western European perspective, one may think that this stems from or is at least correlated with growing Euroscepticism in Hungary. However, looking at the party positions towards EU membership, this does not seem to be the case. The experts classify only one party, namely far-right Our Homeland, as clearly anti-EU; all other oppositional parties are not Eurosceptic. To external observers, it may be surprising that Fidesz is classified as “neutral” towards the statement that EU membership has “mostly been bad for Hungary”. However, up to date, a potential “Huxit” was officially never suggested by Fidesz. Orbán’s fight with the European Union is primarily rhetorical. A recent poll of 2020 showed that leaving the European Union is only supported by a small minority (17%) of the Hungarian population, suggesting that even Fidesz voters are against this measure. Instead, Western leaders have occasionally suggested that Hungary may be better off leaving the EU. For example, in 2021, after the Fidesz government had passed a very controversial Anti-LGBTQI law, Dutch prime minister Rutte suggested that Hungary may consider leaving the EU if it did not respect EU values.

 

Party/Coalition	Overall, EU membership has been a bad thing for Hungary.
Fidesz	Neutral
EM Coalition	Strongly Disagree
Jobbik	Disagree
MSZP	Disagree
PM	Disagree
DK	Disagree
LMP	Strongly Disagree
MM	Disagree
Our Homeland	Strongly Agree
MKKP	Disagree

Table 1. Party Positions toward European Integration. 

 

Conclusion

While the election outcome remains uncertain, Fidesz is the clear favourite. In recent years, Orbán has successfully shaped an electorate homogenous in its preferences in a highly polarised space, where a defection of Fidesz voters to the opposition parties remains the exception. The opposition took the first hurdle with success by joining forces, giving them a real chance at winning for the first time since 2006. The UH coalition is primarily held together by their strong anti-Orbánism. Nevertheless, the six-party coalition is fragmented both organisationally and programmatically. To successfully face the institutional limits that stay in place even if they win the election and form a stable government, they need to strengthen both their ideological and organisational cohesion. In the last days, a poorly phrased sentence, a picture from the past of a Jobbik politician, or a reminder of the controversial role previous left-wing prime minister Gyurcsány played in the 2006 protest are still able to dissuade voters of opposition parties.

 

 

 

Appendix

 

Statement	Scaling
Quite a few of the people running the government are crooked.	Anti-Establishment
The government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.	Anti-Establishment
MPs in Parliament very quickly lose touch with ordinary people.	Anti-Establishment
Hungary should set up an Anti-Corruption  Commission.	Anti-Establishment
There is too much political influence on the selection of cultural and scientific directors.	Anti-Establishment
The state media should be made more independent from political influence.	Anti-Establishment
Municipal authorities need more autonomy.	Anti-Establishment
Hungary needs a new Constitution.	Anti-Establishment
Government officials use their power to try to improve people’s lives.	Pro-Establishment
The state should extend the financial support of unemployed workers from 3 to 9 months.	Economic Left
The tax rate for the highest incomes must be increased.	Economic Left
Wealth should be redistributed from the richest people to the poorest.	Economic Left
In general, government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes.	Economic Right
In general, the state should intervene as little as possible in the economy.	Economic Right
In order to keep pensions affordable, the retirement age may be raised if life expectancy rises.	Economic Right
Workers’ protection regulations should be reduced to fight unemployment.	Economic Right
It should be easier to have an abortion.	GAL
A party’s seat share should be fully determined on the basis of its vote share (full proportional representation).	GAL
The people I disagree with politically are not evil.	GAL
Renewable sources of energy should be supported even if this means higher energy costs.	GAL
Churches should receive less public funding.	GAL
Major government decisions should be approved by a referendum.	GAL
Stricter climate legislation must be introduced, even if it stands in the way of economic growth.	GAL
It should be compulsory for children to go to school until the age of 18.	GAL
Only citizens residing in Hungary permanently should vote in the Hungarian elections.	GAL
Women are disadvantaged in our society.	GAL
Members of the LGBT community threaten the institutions of the traditional family.	TAN
You can tell if a person is good or bad if you know their politics.	TAN
Immigration to Hungary should be made more restrictive.	TAN
The climate crisis is exaggerated.	TAN
Immigrants should adapt to Hungarian values.	TAN
Only legally recognized traditional families (married heterosexual couples) should be helped financially by the state.	TAN
Criminals should be punished more severely.	TAN
It is not possible to integrate the Roma population into Hungarian society.	TAN
Sex education is the responsibility of parents, not of schools.	TAN
Membership of the EU has so far been mostly bad for Hungary.	TAN
Christian values should be given a more central place in political decision-making.	TAN
The people I disagree with politically are just misinformed.	TAN
The adoption of the single European currency (EURO) would be a bad thing for Hungary.	TAN

Table 2. List of Statements and Scaling. Statements in Italic are not included in the Tool.

Endre Borbáth, Jan Philipp Thomeczek, Alberto López Ortega, Norbert Kersting, André Krouwel

 (For the German version of this article, please click here).

On the upcoming Sunday, the most unpredictable Hungarian national election will take place since 2006. After 12 consecutive years of Viktor Orbán and Fidesz majorities, the opposition has a realistic chance of approximating or even surpassing Fidesz’ vote share. Following a civil society organized primary election, six opposition parties came together and joined forces. During the primary elections, opposition voters elected a single candidate to face Fidesz in each of the 106 individual member districts and united behind the prime minister candidate, Péter Márki-Zay. Mounting a centre-right challenge aimed to convince disenchanted ex-Fidesz voters, Márki-Zay represents a centre-right position within a polyphonic big-tent opposition alliance. The six political parties of the alliance ‘United for Hungary’ previously occupied radical right positions (Jobbik), centrist positions (Momentum), centre-left positions (MSZP), left positions (DK), as well as pro-environmental positions (PM, LMP). Beyond the pressure of the majoritarian electoral system, the parties of the opposition alliance are bonded together by their strong anti-establishment, anti-Orbán stance.

 

The campaign was shaping up to be a ‘regular’ election campaign, dominated by ‘socio-cultural’ issues such as the politics of gender. The government called for a referendum to be held at the same time as the election on legislation related to ‘child protection. This plebiscite seems to lack integrity in different areas, if one would apply the criterium of other referendums.  The questions are highly suggestive, widely considered homophobic designed to back opposition parties into a corner. However, the dynamic was suddenly changed by the launch of the Russian attack on Ukraine. The war has forced the Orbán government to change its strategy of fighting the campaign on gender. After 12 years of having invested in a close alliance with Russia, the Fidesz government’s policies came under close scrutiny. This includes the agreement to extend the Paks nuclear power plant based on a Russian backed loan, hosting the Russian backed International Investment Bank (often seen as a Trojan horse of Russian intelligence operations in Europe), hosting regular Putin-Orbán meetings, and investing in close business corporations with Russian elites. With the NATO and EU alliances closing ranks in solidarity with Ukraine, Orbán partly reversed his government’s uncritical stance on Russia and found a pro-peace, pro-neutrality position, as the electorally least harmful alternative. As part of this strategy, the government remains reluctant to impose hard sanctions on Russia or to support military efforts, such as the transport of weapons undertaken by the NATO alliance, but it also shies away from openly challenging NATO. Some observers suggest that Hungary may not even allow NATO planes to cross their territory. Meanwhile, the ‘United for Hungary’ alliance consistently represents a political position more closely aligned with the NATO and EU countries, against Russian aggression. In the last month of the campaign, the war became a ‘super-issue’ crowding out the coverage of other domestic political concerns in the press.

 

Although new in its current manifestation, parties’ stance on the war feeds into the broader dimension of pro- and anti-EU positions. Based on a survey of 80 experts, the PRECEDE project’s voting advice application shows Fidesz’s neutral position on the question of overall evaluating EU membership of Hungary, for example. Despite high popular support for EU membership, since in government Fidesz has taken an ambivalent position on the EU. While it is constantly engaged in a ‘fight against Brussels’, Orbán previously argued that Hungary is entitled to the benefits of EU membership as an emerging market that provides investment opportunities for Western European economies. Hungarian exit has never been on Fidesz’ agenda, instead, he argues for ‘reforming’ the Union to more closely reflect what he considers to be the ‘European’ heritage. The opposition alliance takes a less critical position, with prime minister candidate Márki-Zay promising to introduce the Euro soon. Under the conditions of the current war, Orbán takes a similar ‘pragmatic’ position, arguing that ‘Hungarian interests’ trump more principled views on Ukrainian solidarity. His position remains tenable to the extent that no Russian attack is imminent on a NATO-allied country. Opposition parties frame the country’s role in the war as a test of Hungary’s commitment to the ‘Western world’.

 

While the outcome of the election remains uncertain, Fidesz is a clear favourite. The few public opinion polls that have been conducted since the outbreak of the war show that many voters agree with the pro-peace position Viktor Orbán has taken. On the national day on the 15th of March, activists diffused a previous speech by Viktor Orbán to the marching pro-government supporters in which he argued for a principled view against an autocrat such as Vladimir Putin. Government supporters booed this prior speech, displaying a remarkable commitment to the prime minister that goes beyond a demand for consistent position-taking. Orbán has successfully shaped an electorate homogenous in its preferences in a highly polarized space, where Fidesz-voter defection to the opposition parties remains exceptional. Should the opposition alliance emerge as victorious, to successfully face the institutional limits that stay in place even if they win the election, and form a stable government for years to come, they need to make similar investments in both ideological and organizational cohesion. At present, a poorly phrased sentence, a picture from the past of a Jobbik politician, or a reminder of the role previous left-wing prime minister Gyurcsány played in crushing the 2006 protest are still able to dissuade voters of opposition parties.

The PRECEDE Consortium is proud to announce the release of our Voting Advice Application “Választási Iránytű”, designed for the Hungarian Elections on April 3rd. The tool can be accessed via  http://valasztasi-iranytu.org/.

In order to determine the position of the parties towards the different issues, a survey among scientific more than 80 Hungarian party experts was used as a source. The survey is based on the questions from the 2022 Party Expert Positioning Survey (PEPS). The same questions are included in the tool. The party positions can be downloaded here.

The Election Compass Hungary offers voters unique information in a peculiar electoral environment.  The tool includes both the electoral coalitions as well as the positions of the individual parties. Thus, voters can use the tool to identify how close the individual parties that make up the electoral coalitions are.