Proposed law restricting internal migration favors the ruling party’s electoral chances

A proposed legislation by the ruling party is trying to restrict Hungarian citizens moving to towns with booming populations. The proposal may have implications beyond addresssing practical problems with overpopulation: Átlátszó’s data analysis shows that such demographic shifts usually benefits the opposition. In the last election, the ruling Fidesz party lost important seats in the booming towns of Central and Western Hungary.

It’s a well-known fact that Hungary’s population is declining rapidly, despite the government’s policies and rethoric of promoting childbirth. This February saw the lowest number of children born in Hungary since 1949, the first time such statistics have been kept by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH). The total fertility rate fell to 1.34, one of the lowest in Europe.

It’s no wonder that most Hungarian settlements’ population is shrinking, however, due to internal migration, certain parts of the country are experiencing a dynamic population boom. The most prominent such areas is the Budapest metropolitan area.

For decades, moving away from an crowded urban center and buying a family home in these small suburban towns have been the ambition of young professionals just starting families. Over time, some of these small towns have faced issues supporting a growing population: for  example, Érd, a small town 22 kilometers from Budapest has grown from 43,000 to 73,000 residents from 1990 to 2023. The town became a center of national attention when the mayor complained that the local infrastructure is overburdened by the population boom, causing water shortages, as well as traffic jams and a lack of school access for children.

Restricting growth instead of keeping up with it

A legistlation to address this problem could be reasonable. However, a recent bill introduced by Fidesz MP Tibor Navracsics would not offer extra financial support for booming towns.

Instead it would allow local goverments to restrict newcomers’ right to purchase property using taxation, right of pre-emption, and outright ban, as well as setting „population limits”.

Previously, Navracsics explained that the so-called Settlement Protection Act is necessary to relieve overburdened infrastructure and to protect the “local identity” of settlements. Navracsics specifiaclly cited the Budapest agglomeration, the areas around Lake Venice and Lake Balaton, and small villages of the Serbian and German ethnic minorities as places where internal migration should be curbed.

After analyzing population and electoral figures, we suspect that the restrictions could have political implications.

In the 2024 municipal and EP elections, Fidesz lost important seats in small towns, especially in fast-growing regions,

such as the Budapest Metropolitan area. Last year, long-serving Fidesz mayors were ousted in the towns of Ócsa, Solymár and Törökbálint. In Fóton and Tököl, two Fidesz mayors retired and their successors lost to independent candidates.

Trends not in favour of Fidesz

In many small towns, the ruling pary also underperformed in the European Parliamentary elections, which were held concurrently with the municipal votes. If we compare the results of Fidesz in the 2022 national elections and the 2024 EP-list vote, we see that Fidesz lost more than 10% in the towns of the Budapest metropolitan area.

The map below shows how support for the governing parties has changed by municipality:

In the rest of the country, we see similar trends: in general, in municipalities with a growing population, Fidesz’s vote share has decreased more than in municipalities with a stagnating or decreasing population.

Last year, Fidesz declined in almost all settlements compared to 2022: based on settlement-level data, the average Hungarian settlement (including Budapest districts) saw its support decline by 8.971 percent.

Fidesz support has typically fallen more than the average in settlements with a growing population.

The correlation between population growth and the Fidesz result is shown in the charts below.

The largest cluster is made up of municipalities where both the population and Fidesz support declined between 2024 and 2022 – not surprising given Hungary’s declining population.

The second largest cluster is made up of municipalities with a growing population and a shift away from Fidesz.

There are far fewer municipalities where the population has decreased and the percentage of Fidesz voters has increased, and the smallest group of municipalities where both the population and the percentage of Fidesz voters have increased.

Looking at the data, a clear trend emerges: dynamically growing settlements are moving away from Fidesz more than the national average of 8.971 percent. The trend is especially striking when we look at mid-to-large sized villages and small towns, such as the Metropolitan towns Nagytarcsa, Mogyoród, Szada, or Erdőkertes, where the government parties lost more than 10 percent of their votes, coinciding with extremely rapid population growth (8-10 percent in 2 years).

In all metropolitan towns where population growth exceeded 5% in the last two years, the governing party invariably performed worse than the national average.

In addition to Budapest metropolitan area, Fidesz’s support in the fast-growing municipalities of Győr-Moson-Sopron and Fejér counties has also declined by above-average levels. Losses in the small settlements surrounding the city of Győr (a traditional stronghold for Fidesz) could be especially concerning for the governing pary. They recently lost the city’s mayoral seat as well, and a recent survey shows that, support for the governing parties has since plummeted.

In Fejér county, West of the Budapest metropolitan area, there are also several settlements with a growing populations, sorrounding the Lake Velence. Navracsics also named the region as one needing „protection” – alas Fidesz’s support also dropped in these booming municipalities.

Political shift driven by a rising TISZA

A driver of shifting party support is the rise of Péter Magyar’s TISZA Party, which has overtaken Fidesz-KDNP among higher earners, graduates and young people, including a rising rural middle class. These are the very groups who are more likely to move to Suburbia, while the elderly and lower-income voters who make up the base of Fidesz are less mobile.

As we have previously reported, TISZA has been establishing small, local networks of activists all over the country. A density of these so-called „islands” is strikingly high in the Budapest metropolitan area.

As national elections are to be held in less than a year, restricting internal migration now may be too late to play a desisive electoral role, unless the results are extremely close in some constituencies. However, based on last year’s local election results, mayors and town council members may rightly fear demographic changes – and if given the power, it would not be surprising if they resort to immigration bans to protect their seats.

Written and translated by Zalán Zubor, data visualization by Krisztián Szabó. the Hungarian version of this story is here. Cover image by Átlátszó.