On the Hungarian election of 2022-why did Unite for Hungary fail?

 The Hungarian election of 2022, much to the surprise of many political commentators, saw Fidesz-KDNP (Christian Democratic National Party of Hungary, which is in reality just a satellite of Fidesz) not only convincingly defeat the United for Hungary alliance (consisting of the Hungarian Socialist Party, Politics Can Be Different [Hungary's main Green Party], Dialogue for Hungary, the Democratic Coalition, the Momentum Movement, and most surprisingly, Jobbik) but increase their supermajority further.

In fact, Fidesz-KDNP managed to win a total of 135 seats, 88 of which were single member constituencies and 47 of which were list seats, and their vote share increased to 53.3%, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2018. A key reason for this was that most of Jobbik's supporters refused to vote for the United for Hungary alliance, seeing Jobbik's participation in the alliance as a sell-out in their eyes, resulting in their moderate supporters voting for Fidesz and their extremist base voting for the radical and racist right Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazank). Another was Viktor Orban's quick condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (which shares a small border with Hungary) despite Mr Orban normally being one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's strongest allies in Europe. Thirdly, media coverage was heavily slanted to favour Fidesz-KDNP from the start, and finally, many Hungarian voters are still unwilling to vote for an opposition coalition which still has Ferenc Gyurcsany and other MSZP politicians as key figures of it, even with a moderate, Peter Marki-Zey, having been its Prime Ministerial candidate.

United for Hungary, far from being able to unite enough opposition voters to win power, actually lost a total of 8 seats taking the aggregate total of its component parties into account (total: 64 on 2018 results). It only won 56 seats and of the 18 single member constituencies it won, only 2 (Baranya-01, corresponding to "Pecs Central", and Csongrad-01, corresponding to "Szeged East") were outside the Hungarian capital, Budapest, where it won all but 2 of the SMCs (Budapest 13 and 14 were Fidesz-KDNP's sole wins there at constituency level). Their particularly poor performances outside Hungary's major cities show that incorporating Jobbik, Hungary's closest answer to UKIP/Reform UK, was a serious mistake, as was continuing to have Mr Gyurcsany (Prime Minister of Hungary from 2004 to 2009) as a frontline candidate. 12 years on, Hungarian voters overall have still not forgiven him or his government. Overall this was a disaster for progressive politics in Hungary.

To the shock of many, the Our Homeland Movement won 7 seats and easily passed the 5% threshold with 6.15% of the vote, almost entirely from ex-Jobbik supporters, as shown by Mi Hazank's strongest constituency results being in rural counties far from Budapest. The satirical Two-Tailed Dog Party did not however managed to pass the threshold, but 3.28% of the vote, more than half that of Mi Hazank's, is an impressive result for a joke party like the Two-Tailed Dog Party, many of whose candidates dressed in dog costumes for their candidate photographs. The only other lists to run were the Solution Movement of Gyorgy Gattyan and the Party of Normal Life (primarily an anti-vaxxer, anti-lockdown party) which polled 1.08% and 0.73% of the vote respectively. Although the Leftist Alliance (the Hungarian Worker's Party and Yes Solidarity for Hungary Movement) did not run a national list it was the only party outside these parties who collected a noticeable number of votes from constituency candidates, only one of whom managed to poll more than 1% of the vote and many of whom finished bottom of the poll in their respective constituency. No independent candidates won either, the best result amongst them going to Jozsef Mezei in Hadju-Bihar-04 (just south of the city of Debrecen) who polled 8% of the vote, much better than most independent candidates fare in Hungarian elections. The final seat went once again to the German minority list in Hungary. 

Turnout remained relatively similar to 2018, at 69.54%, and with this election Viktor Orban continues his tenure as Hungary's longest ever serving Prime Minister.