English
The Hungarian electoral commission informed that it has already received over 190 thousand votes from the diaspora Hungarians – out of about half a million such voters who are registered. Most of these votes come from the neighboring countries that have large Hungarian communities – Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, and especially from the Romanian area of Transylvania.
These voters vote by mail, and their votes are counted only in the proportional list for the Hungarian Parliament – since they don’t have addresses in Hungary to qualify for the majority lists. Besides them, about 57,000 voters registered to vote in the Hungarian embassies across the world – these are citizens who have addresses in Hungary and will vote in both lists, but are currently living or working abroad.
In past elections, the second category has trended more toward the opposition, but the larger, diaspora vote, has overwhelmingly supported the right wing Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In recent elections these votes were not decisive, as Orban would win by large margins at home, but with the flood of extremely divided polls, some of whom show lead for Orban while others strongly favor the opposition Tisza party, it could be that this time the diaspora vote actually contributes to the outcome of the elections.