Since the parliamentary election held on the 8th April 2018, the Hungarian left has got into a deeper crisis than ever before. During the current period of evaluation and drawing the lessons of the election results, factors such as the political strategies of the opposition parties, efforts made at organizational development and the capacities of political leaders have been called into question. Policy Solutions considers it as an absolute priority that at the beginning of the new parliamentary term the conclusions on which the opposition can establish its strategy for the next years should be made on the basis of facts and figures. “Social democratic values in Hungary”, the joint publication of Policy Solutions and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung aims to contribute to this process by surveying the public acceptance of the key pillars of social democratic values in Hungary.

We believe that it is not enough to be aware of which leftist values and policy proposals are strongly embedded in Hungarian society and which ones are more divisive, but it also should be known how credibly the different political parties are able to represent them. Accordingly, following the analysis of public support for some key values and policies of social democracy, in the second part of the publication we examine what proportion of the Hungarian society deems each political party the most credible in separate issues. Focusing on the latter aspect is essential as it shows which social groups consider the parties positioned to the left of Fidesz credible, and it also indicates which segments of the society should be convinces by these parties that they represent social democratic values the best.

Authors: András Bíró-Nagy - Gergely Laki 

The research report can be downloaded from here.