Strategic voting in the Hungarian elections of 2014: evidence for Duverger's law under the compensatory mixed electoral system?

Abstract

This article tests Duverger's law through an analysis of the Hungarian parliamentary elections of 2014 which were held under the new compensatory mixed electoral system. The results show that while a strategic voting had a tendency to grow under Hungarian supermixed system in the period 1990-2010, in the elections of 2014 strategic voting was not a universal phenomenon under the plurality rule, as indicated by many violations of Duverger’s law in Hungarian singlemember districts. Our research confirmed that the effect of electoral institutions (institutional structure) is contingent and at the district level inhibited by country-specific conditions. However, as a new Hungarian compensatory mixed electoral system distributes seats not only by plurality rule in SMDs (nominal tier), but also via proportional representation (list tier), a further research should pay attention to crosscontamination of both tiers of electoral system, as a potential factor which moves Hungarian electoral competition substantially away from Duvergerian predictions.