A public opinion poll conducted by the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Policy Solutions, a Hungarian think tank, shows that a slight majority of Hungarians believe the country is worse off than ten years ago. A pro-government analyst suspects that the pollsters put the wrong questions.

HVG carries a detailed report on the poll under the headline ‘Even most Fidesz supporters believe Orbán cannot be voted out of office’. A majority of respondents believe the government’s policies favour the rich and that being a Fidesz supporter is essential to ‘make headway’. Unsurprisingly, HVG writes, a relative majority of Hungarians (43 per cent) believe that the country is in a worse shape than 10 years ago, before Fidesz took over. Even 60 per cent of Fidesz supporters, they point out, are convinced that the government cannot be sent packing in democratic elections.

Demokrata’s Gábor Bencsik finds the questions posed by the pollsters biased. Writing on his Facebook page, he challenges the claim that most Fidesz supporters don’t believe in the possibility of voting the government out of office in democratic elections. That result, he writes is in sharp contrast with the poll’s finding that 80 per cent of Fidesz supporters consider Hungary’s political system a democracy. Bencsik thinks that the question whether a change in government can occur in Hungary via democratic elections is skewed. Fidesz supporters may answer ‘no’ because they believe that their leaders are popular and therefore can only be removed by unconstitutional means, he explains.