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