Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Kálmán Petőcz: National Populism and Electoral Behaviour
Kálmán Petőcz Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (Madarské krcsťanskodemokratické hnutie-Magyar Kereszténydemokrata Mozgalom). These political organizations were founded in the first months of social changes following November 1989; the Independent Hungarian Initiative (Maďarská nezávislá iniciativa-Független Magyar Kezdeményezés), a direct predecessor of the Hungarian Civic Party, was founded on November 18, 1989. The three parties formed SMK-MKP before the 1998 parliamentary elections. 19 Except the Nove Zámky district that is on the map divided into Nové Zámky and Štúrovo constituencies. 20 In a separate chapter featured in this publication, Zsuzsanna Lampl-Mészáros argues that approximately 7-8% of all inhabitants of southern Slovakia who officially declare Slovak ethnic nationality arc in fact ethnic Hungarians in terms of identity. That would justify a conclusion that the success rate of President Gašparovič among ‘real’ Slovaks from southern Slovakia was yet a couple of percent higher than official statistical data seem to suggest. 21 Please see also Petőcz (2007), p. 7. All ballots not cast for the Party of Hungarian Coalition were viewed as votes of non-Hungarian (i.e. Slovak) voters. These votes were subsequently calculated by the ratio corresponding to election results posted by individual Slovak parties. At the same time, we assumed that almost all ethnic Hungarians but only a statistically irrelevant proportion of Slovak voters voted for SMK-MKP. This assumption may be justified by several arguments: first, the actual overall election result of SMK-MKP that received 11.68% of the popular vote nationwide; second, the election campaign waged by the SNS rang strong anti-Hungarian undertones, providing additional motivation for ethnic Hungarians to vote for SMK-MKP; last but not least, the way of dissolving the previous ruling coalition in February 2006 as well as some negative social effects of the reforms it implemented probably discouraged ethnic Hungarian voters from voting for the SDKU that was relatively successful among ethnic Hungarian voters in previous elections, especially in 1998. Other parties that previously attracted ethnic Hungarians’ votes (c.g. the Party of Democratic Left of the Party of Civic Understanding) de facto ceased to exist although they formally ran in the elections. It is true that if particular Slovak parties’ election results reflected the number of ethnic Slovak as established by the 2001 population census, the resulting figures would be slightly lower. We shall explain the difference between these two sets of figures in Table 5. 22 The interval between the two figures in the table’s far-right column expresses the different methodology of calculating voting preferences of voters with Slovak ethnic background. The higher figure was calculated by the method used also in Table 2 (i.e. all votes not cast for SMK-MKP were considered as votes of Slovak voters). The lower figure was calculated as breaking down election results of particular Slovak parties to the number of Slovak inhabitants in each given district (constituency) established by the 2001 population census. 23 Voter participation in the 2006 parliamentary elections was 62.62% in the Dunajská Streda district and 61.51% in the Štúrovo constituency; voter participation in the 2009 presidential elections was 64.71% in the Dunajská Streda district and 60.20% in the Štúrovo constituency. 24 Please see footnote 16. 25 According to the author’s own analysis, the ballots cast by Slovak voters made up approximately 0.5% of the overall election result of SMK-MKP (11.68%). Please sec Petőcz (2007), p. 8. 26 They include the Communist Party of Slovakia, the Association of Slovak Workers, the Party of Democratic Left, SLNKO, the Slovak People’s Party, the Movement for Democracy and the Leftist Bloc. 164
