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The far-right Jobbik party won a by-election in the Taploca constituency on 12 April, gaining its first ever individual constituency seat.
Jobbik’s candidate Rig Lajos obtained 35.3 per cent of the votes, while the candidate for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party obtained 34.4 per cent.
“The ruling party’s strategy has been beaten down, and not by the left, but by the right”, notes Budapest daily Magyar Nemzet. Headlining with “the change coming from the right”, the paper writes that “a shift in power is in the air”. Fidesz already regards Jobbik – which has never before obtained more than 20 per cent of the vote – as a threat in the 2018 general election.
According to the conservative daily –
even if the majority of voters are unsatisfied with the government’s latest decisions — the internet tax, rapprochement with Russia — they do not entirely trust Jobbik. But it must be recognised that while the discourse of the extreme right has had a certain resonance, the ruling right-wing party has failed to mobilise itself.
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