53% of Budapest voters, who have promised definite participation in the 2019 municipal elections, said they are going to vote for István Tarlós, and only 40% of them are planning to support Karácsony, while 7% of them would vote for the „opposition of the opposition”, Róbert Puzsér.
With that, the gap continues to widen between the mayor currently in office and those challenging him, according to the representative Budapest public opinion poll of 1000 participants conducted by Nézőpont Institute for Magyar Nemzet.
The municipal election campaign, which has gained intensity over the past month and will continue in the next three weeks, appears to be more favourable to István Tarlós in the capital; his opponents cannot get a grip on him. While Mr Karácsony is trying to speak to the supporters of the opposition without willing to notice other opposition candidates, István Tarlós, who is asking for approval to continue as the Mayor of Budapest, has been putting his skills and ability as a city leader in the centre of attention. And he didn’t do so by chance: the current Mayor with the chance to run for another term has a significant lead in the race. When asked whether the particular person is “fit to be the Mayor of Budapest”, 57% of the voters responded saying yes in the case of Tarlós, 35% in the case of Mr Karácsony and 10% in the case of Puzsér. The assumptions that the particular person is unfit show exactly the opposite proportion: only 35% of the voters feel that Tarlós is unfit to be the next mayor, while 52% of them think Karácsony and 81% claim Puzsér are unfit for the position. Krisztián Berki has little reason to be happy: while 2% of the voters think he is fit for the position, 92% of them claim he is unfit. In the race to prove who is fit for the title of the Mayor of Budapest, Tarlós’ advantage has frozen; changes detected since the last poll carried out two weeks ago are within the error margin.
Perhaps this also has an effect on the fact that regarding the approaching municipal elections, more and more Budapest residents think that Tarlós is going to win. 60% of them have already said so even at the beginning of September (including 43% of the left-wing supporters), while the most recent poll has shown that 64% of Budapest residents continue to feel this way (43% of the left-wing supporters still), which is considered a strengthening beyond the error margin. While the person considered to be the winner is not guaranteed to win automatically, he has a significant impact on the mobilisation opportunities of his opponents.
The persistent advantage gained in the race to see who is fit for the title, and the improving tendency of the winning chances explain why István Tarlós leads the race as well. 43% of all Budapest residents, 53 of those with definite participation have promised to support Tarlós, while 29 and 6% of Budapest residents, 40% and 7% of those with definite participation said they are going to support Karácsony and Puzsér respectively. A strange outcome matching Krisztián Berki’s unusual campaign shows that the 1% having promised to vote for him seems to be inactive: this time he did not even have enough supporters from his definite voters remaining to come up with a 1% result.
Methodology
The public opinion poll of the Nézőpont Institute was conducted between September 11 and September 21, 2019 in Budapest, including 1000 telephone interviews. It is a representative sample of the capital population over the age of 18, based on gender, age and education, with a maximum sampling error of 3.2 percent.