Hungarian Elections in 2002

The Hungarian elections in 2002 serve as delicacy not
only for political scientists, but also for all kinds
of social scientists. The theory of rational choice
is not enough in itself to explain the results of the
two rounds. The role of emotions and
symbols represented in the theory of symbolic
politics seems to be unavoidable in the analysis.
There are two common features of the two-round
elections all around the world: the participation is
higher in the first round, and in the second one
people tend to vote for the party that seems to be
winning. Contrary to these tendencies in the
Hungarian case, although the participation was very
high in the first round, it was even higher in the
second one, and the party that seemed to be losing
the whole election at the end of the first round was
the winner of the second one. What happened between
the two rounds? Political scientists can explain this
phenomenon with a new campaign method which used
emotions and national symbols and activated
previously uncertain voters. This work presents a
case of voting behaviour when people do not have
enough information to decide, thus they use their
emotions as information.

Autorentext
MA: Studied Psychology and Cultural Anthropology at Eötvös Lorand University of Arts and Sciences, and Nationalism at Central European University. PhD student in Social Psychology at ELTE. Project manager at Smile Foundation.

Klappentext
The Hungarian elections in 2002 serve as delicacy not only for political scientists, but also for all kinds of social scientists. The theory of rational choice is not enough in itself to explain the results of the two rounds. The role of emotions and symbols represented in the theory of symbolic politics seems to be unavoidable in the analysis. There are two common features of the two-round elections all around the world: the participation is higher in the first round, and in the second one people tend to vote for the party that seems to be winning. Contrary to these tendencies in the Hungarian case, although the participation was very high in the first round, it was even higher in the second one, and the party that seemed to be losing the whole election at the end of the first round was the winner of the second one. What happened between the two rounds? Political scientists can explain this phenomenon with a new campaign method which used emotions and national symbols and activated previously uncertain voters. This work presents a case of voting behaviour when people do not have enough information to decide, thus they use their emotions as information.