The Hungarian Polls, a final update

 

Prepared by Tamás Bodor, University of Wisconsin, and Claire Durand. Université de Montréal

All votes have now been counted for the 2026 Hungarian national election. According to the final tally, Tisza won 53.5% of the votes, which amounts to a 14.7-point lead over Fidesz (38.9%.) This final tally, however, is not suitable for assessing the performance of pre-election polls: it includes over 300,000 mail-in ballots cast by members of the Hungarian diaspora and nearly 85,000 in-person absentee votes cast abroad, which were not included in the sampling frames of the polls.

As our Hungarian colleague Gábor Tóka pointed out, our first report on April 13 was based on a preliminary vote count that was not yet sufficiently accurate. First, by the time we obtained the preliminary count on April 13, most mail-in ballots were already included in the total. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of domestically cast absentee ballots had not yet been counted. While the former, the diaspora ballots, heavily favored Fidesz, the latter were strongly favorable to Tisza.

For our updated report, we are now using the final tally from which we excluded mail-in votes. Moreover, we also excluded in-person absentee votes cast abroad. We assumed that these 85,000 absentee votes favored Tisza 63% to Fidesz’s 31%, just as the outstanding votes as of April 13 did. Accordingly, we estimate that Tisza received 55.65% of the domestic votes, while Fidesz received 36.40%, amounting to a 19.25-point victory for Tisza domestically. We believe that these figures correspond most closely to the poll’s sampling frame. They are very similar to Gábor Tóka’s estimate of April 14 (55.7-36.3) and to the Wikipedia estimate of the constituency vote (55.3-36.7).

With these new numbers, our conclusion has changed. The new estimates are presented in the following table:

This shows that Medián and 21 Kutatóközpont who had “boosted” the difference between Tisza and Fidesz in their likely voter model were right. Their estimates are closer to the comparable election results. Overall, excluding McLaughlin, who is clearly an outlier, the polls overestimated Fidesz by an average of 3.3 points and underestimated Tisza by 1.8 points, and at least one of their estimates is outside their margin of error (except for Median and 21 Kutatóközpont). This could be partly due to pollsters’ caution, given their underestimation of Fidesz in 2022. This could also be due to voters, given the very high turnout.

Conclusion:

Our first concern was to see what would happen as the campaign went on, since two groups of pollsters published contradictory estimates. The answer: All pollsters whose estimates showed a Fidesz lead earlier, except one, -, stopped publishing weeks before the election, which speaks for itself. The one exception: McLaughlin & Associates, maintained that Fidesz led Tisza using an in-person survey, which also speaks for itself.

Our second concern was the performance of the new polling methods.  These new methods varied and accounted for most polls published in April. We did not find any substantial and systematic differences according to the mode of administration and sampling source, as the two are related.

Our last point is about the proportion of undecideds, in fact non-disclosers, that is, all the respondents who do not inform their preferences. This proportion remained quite high until the end, regardless of the mode used. This may partially explain the difference between the polls’ estimates and the votes.

Best,

Claire Durand and Tamás Bodor

The Hungarian Election Polls, the Day After

 

Hungarian Election polls, the Day After

Prepared by Claire Durand (Université de Montréal) and Tamás Bodor (University of Wisconsin)

Hi,

To follow on our post on Friday, here are our observations regarding the pollsters’ work for the Hungarian election. We examine the quality of the polls that were conducted during April.

1.      1. Let us notice that the pollsters who were considered close to the opposition or independent produced very good estimates in general. On average, there is only a 1.1 difference between the polls and the results of Tisza and 0.9 difference for Fidesz. Both parties were very slightly overestimated by these pollsters (see table below).

2.      2. Here is the table of the results, based on the official results available on Monday, April 13, 4PM. They are not likely to change much.

3.      3. However, three of these pollsters overestimated Tisza and underestimated Fidesz. Interestingly, two of these pollsters are the ones we referred to in our previous post – Medián and 21 Kutatóközpont – whose allocation of undecideds was not proportional and gave an advantage to Tisza over Fidesz. The “pure” proportional allocation would possibly have led to better estimates.

4.      4. We can hardly speak about the polls that were considered close to the government because none of them published any poll in April, besides one. The only pollster of this group who published a poll is the American pollster McLaughlin. It underestimated Tisza by 12.8 points and overestimated Fidesz by 6.2 points.  These numbers speak for themselves.

5.      5, The pollster Nézőpont, considered close to the government, issued a statement regarding its performance. It recognized that its estimates were not accurate and informed that it will analyse how it could explain the situation.

6.      6. In terms of modes of administration, only three pollsters used live phone interviews and one, in-person interviews (McLaughlin). The others used a mix of different modes (see table). Atlas Intel, a Brazilian pollster present in other electoral campaigns (U.S.A., France, at least), with usually good estimates, also appeared in this campaign. It uses a mode of administration it calls random digital recruitment, etc. It consists in recruiting respondents on the web through apps and web sites with whom the pollster has agreements. It has the advantage of randomness and being web-based.

Conclusion:

There were a few things going wrong in the polls for the Hungarian election. First, a major difference appeared in estimates almost uniquely based on the pollsters presumed affiliation. This is “not normal”. It means that there is likely some “tempering with data” based on hypotheses made on the voters’ behavior. The use of likely voter models that are not transparent is usually associated with such results, but we have never seen such a substantial difference.

We did not always have the necessary information to assess whether allocation of undecideds or likely voter models explained the differences between pollsters. In fact, the last published polls were even less transparent than the polls published before during the campaign.

Two situations are worth mentioning. First the government-leaning polls were much less transparent – three out of five did not inform on the proportion of undecideds and on the estimates before allocation of these undecideds. In addition, four out of five did not publish polls in April. These pollsters need to examine their methods and the information they provide. It is a good point that Nézőpont informs that it will do so.

Besides, among the opposition-leaning or independent pollsters, some estimates were clearly boosted in favor of Tisza. The good news is that we could notice it because the pollsters were transparent and presented their estimates before and after allocation of the undecideds. However, they did not provide this information for their polls published in April.

 

Best,

Claire Durand and Tamás Bodor.

What about the polls for the Hungarian election next Sunday?

 By Claire Durand and Tamás Bodor

We—Tamás Bodor from the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point and Claire Durand, from the Université de Montréal—wish to draw your attention to the Hungarian elections that will be held this coming Sunday, April 12. Hungarians face a situation where pollsters are identified, according to the Wikipedia page, as being either “close to the government” (n=5) or “close to the opposition or independent” (n=7). As you can see on this Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_Hungarian_parliamentary_election, there is a significant disagreement between the two groups of pollsters.

If we consider all the polls conducted since the beginning of March, for example, the government-leaning polls forecast Fidesz, the governing coalition led by Viktor Orbán, ahead of Tisza, the opposition coalition led by Péter Magyar, by 5 to 8 points (an average of 5.8 percentage points).

Meanwhile, the polls conducted by the opposition-leaning or independent pollsters forecast a Tisza lead by 9 to 23 points, for an average of 13.4 p.p.

Who is correct? Usually, we think that pollsters, regardless of their preferences, seek to forecast the results as accurately as possible since electoral polls serve as a showcase that can help them establish their credibility. So why this situation?

We looked into a number of possible reasons. Here is what we found.

1)      We examined what happened in the 2022 election. In that election, if we take the pollsters’ last campaign poll, Fidesz was underestimated by around 3 points (2.2 to 5.1) and the opposition coalition—which was not the same as this year’s coalition—was substantially overestimated by 4.1 to 11.1 points, for an average of around 9 points. However, there were no significant or apparent differences according to presumed affiliation (most pollsters were the same as those who are active in this election).

2)      We checked whether the differences could be explained by modes of administration. There is indeed a difference between estimates according to mode of administration and there is a difference in mode use according to affiliation. All the government-leaning pollsters conduct their polls using live interviewers, while only three of the opposition-leaning or independent pollsters use this mode. The four other pollsters use mixed modes (telephone + web, sms, web + telephone), “IA assisted IVR” and “web+social media”.  However, if we keep only the live interviewer polls, there is still a clear difference remaining between the two groups of pollsters.  Using all the polls conducted since January 1, the government-leaning pollsters estimate Fidesz’s share at an average of 46.9% (45% - 51%) while the opposition/independent group estimates Fidesz’s share at 38.9% on average (35% - 41%). The pollsters using other modes—all opposition leaning or independent—estimate Fidesz’s share at 38.1 (35%-40.1%). This is not different from the polls conducted by the opposition-leaning and independent pollsters using live interviews.

3)      We examined whether there were differences in the proportion of undecided voters. Government leaning polls differ from the other polls by a much lower proportion of undecided voters, that is 14.1% on average, compared with 23.2%. However, the proportion of undecideds is not provided by three of the five government leaning pollsters. Reallocation of undecideds to one or the other coalition may contribute to explaining the differences between the two groups. Since most pollsters provided the information on the estimates before allocation of undecideds, we computed what a proportional allocation of undecideds would produce in terms of estimates. When we compared our estimates with the pollsters’ estimates, we found that three pollsters (9 polls), all in the opposition leaning group, allocated the undecideds non proportionally in a way that led to a systematic increased advantage of Tisza over Fidesz by an average of four points (between 2 and 6.4). Indeed, two of these pollsters forecast a much higher lead of Tisza than the other pollsters.

4)      We are left with not many possible other explanations for the differing estimates among pollsters. One of them may be likely voter models, if we assume that they systematically vary among pollsters according to their partisan leaning. The higher rate of “undecideds” / non-voters in opposition-leaning polls and the possibly biased allocation of these undecideds might hint at that possibility.

Moreover, the shifting political opinion climate in Hungary might have generated a profound change in patterns of respondents’ behavior. For the first time since the party’s return to power in 2010, most voters now expect Fidesz to lose the election. Accordingly, it may not be an implausible proposition that a “shy Fidesz” effect might be at play. However, theoretically, Fidesz supporters’ reluctance to disclose their party preference should affect all polls. Therefore, a hypothesized shy Fidesz effect can account for systematic differences in estimates only if it goes undetected and unaddressed by some pollsters but not by others.

It appears that Hungary is very polarized, as is usually the case when only two main groups fight in an election. This has led some people in Hungary to suggest that we should use only the polls conducted by one or the other group (usually the opposition-leaning/ independent group).  On what basis could we do that? We do not see any rationale for such a decision. The truth can probably be found in an average of all the polls. That being said, both groups agree on one point, namely, that both Fidesz and Tisza increased their share in the last few weeks. The global forecast from all the polls using local regression (Wikipedia page) has Fidesz at 42.5 and Tisza at 47.5. We need to keep in mind, however, that there are twice as many polls conducted by opposition-leaning/independent pollsters, and these polls forecast a larger difference between the two coalitions. This situation has an impact on the average forecast.

One last point: We were happy to see that, for most polls, we had access to a well-identified paragraph presenting essential information on the methodology, that is, dates of fieldwork, mode of administration, sample size, proportion of undecideds and sometimes information about the use of a likely voter model. This information was available either in the articles presenting the polls or on the pollsters’ reports. An example to follow in all election campaigns?

It will be interesting to follow the Hungarian election on Sunday. The incoming vote tally results will bring about the moment of truth and possibly a moment of reckoning: this time, not only for the losing party, but also for the polling industry in Hungary. Ultimately, we all might also be reminded that pollsters’ political preferences should not be known publicly.

 Best,

Claire and Tamas