A key test for Hungary’s upcoming, April 12 parliamentary election was the March 15 competing mass rallies of the Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Russophobe Tisza party of challenger Peter Magyar. While Western reports have maintained a drumbeat that consistently indicated for the last many weeks that Orbán had fallen behind Magyar, a somewhat neutral measurement has the Orbán rally about 20% bigger than the Magyar one. While this has not stopped all of the pretty wild claims from Magyar’s Western backers over the last 24 hours, there was overall a noticeably muted response, and a noticeable lack of triumphalism.
The Orbán rally was a march for peace, led by a banner reading: “We will not be a Ukrainian colony.” The opposition rally attacked Orbán for ending Hungary’s freedom. Bloomberg’s headline read, “Hungary’s Opposition Flexes Muscle with Mass Rally Against Orbán.” Daily Kos’s headline the day before the rallies read: “New Polling Shows Hungary’s Dictator Losing Big.”
The Hungarian Tourism Agency recorded, based on mobile cell data, about 150,000 devices at the Magyar rally on Heroes’ Square and Andrassy Avenue and about 180,000 devices at Orbán’s Kossuth Square and Alkotmany Street.
Hungary’s Telex explained that the “analysis of mobile cell data is not a particularly new technology in tourism.” In Hungary over the past year, it has been used on at least two other notable occasions. There are complexities in using them in determining absolute numbers (the same phone can be picked up by different towers, people passing through may not be part of the rally, etc.), however it is a pretty good indicator of relative sizes. They conclude: “For the time being, there is no other, independent estimate of the events of March 15, but it is certain that there were many people” at both locations.
The same Telex had reported two weeks ago that, according to a Median poll, Tisza was ahead of Fidesz by 11% and ahead by 20% amongst voters most likely to vote.
