The governing Fidesz party is seen to come with a sweeping victory and has a good chance of securing a majority in the Budapest assembly at the upcoming local elections next month, a poll think-tank Political Capital released to MTI on Wednesday showed.
Fidesz, ruling in alliance with the Christian-Democrats, is running the largest number of candidates, 8,823, in the country for mayoral and local assembly seats in the elections on October 3, the poll said.
The second largest number of candidates, 4,235, will run on the tickets of radical nationalist Jobbik, which still comes ahead of the main opposition Socialists with a total of 3,693 candidates. Out of the candidates of the Socialists, who governed during the previous eight years, 194 compete to win mandates as mayors, which is only half of the candidates the party ran in the 2006 local elections.
The most that the Socialists may expect from the local poll is to keep their support in level; the biggest challenge the party is to face is losing positions to Jobbik.
The biggest hope for new green Politics Can Be Different (LMP) may be to prevent Fidesz from gaining majority in the Budapest assembly.
In that assembly Political Capital predicts Fidesz-KDNP to win 17 mandates, the Socialists 9, LMP 4 and Jobbik 4.
Istvan Tarlos, Fidesz’s candidate to head Budapest, is seen as a shoo-in, the think tank said.
