What is Strategic Voting

A main topic of the 2018 election campaign in Hungary was strategic voting, seen as an opportunity for opposition parties to remove the governing coalition from power. Strategic split-ticket voting was incentivized by the political context and the electoral system and was further facilitated by a limited cooperation between opposition political forces. Nonetheless, demand-side coordination was indispensable in this aspect. While social media was an important channel during the campaign, it was not crucial for strategic voting as it was mostly used to reinforce the positions of candidates among their own supporters, “preaching to the choir”. The influence of strategically split ballots can be measured in seat shares by modeling what would have happened if there was no coordination and cooperation at all. Results indicate that strategic votes transferred a total of 15 seats from the governing parties to the opposition political blocs, however this was not enough to prevent the decisive victory of the Fidesz-KDNP and another two-thirds supermajority in the Hungarian National Assembly.