Szonda Ipsos’s latest political beauty contest awards top prizes to Hungary’s president, its house speaker, the main opposition leader and the head of a small conservative opposition party whose parliamentary group has just disintegrated, Nepszabadsag daily said on Tuesday.
All Hungary’s politicians, including President Laszlo Solyom, have negative ratings, according to the poll conducted between February 17 and 24 with a representative sample of 1,500 adults.
Katalin Szili, the hard-left Socialist parliamentary speaker who is angling to become the mayor of Pecs, a town in south Hungary, is the most popular — or rather least unpopular — professional politician while Viktor Orban, the leader of right-of-centre Fidesz, follows her, according to Szonda Ipsos. Ibolya David, leader of the Democratic Forum, who is battling for her political life, is fourth on the list.
These results, as generally the case, bear only a glancing resemblance to the parties’ standings. Fidesz towers above all the other parties and none other than the Socialists would have a chance of getting seats in parliament based on current polls.
In fifth and sixth place stand Kinga Goncz, the foreign minister and Jozsef Graf, the farm minister neither of whom are strongly associated with their party, the minority governing Socialists.
Trailing near the bottom of the list are the embattled prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, his finance minister, Janos Veres and the justice minister, Tibor Draskovics.
Liberal watchers will notice that Janos Koka, the parliamentary leader of the Free Democrats and Gabor Fodor, the party’s leader, are polls apart: Koka languishes at the bottom of the list while Fodor is in mid-field.
