It is almost common knowledge that elections in Hungary are characterized by a lack of a level playing field, as noted in the final report of the OSCE-ODIHR Election Observation Mission for the 2022 parliamentary elections. The results of an investigation by Political Capital, a research institute in Hu.gary, funded by the European Media and Information Fund, into political advertising spending and the promotion of hostile disinformation narratives on social media during the 2024 election campaign in Hungary have just confirmed this. The current analysis follows our previous report published at the end of April, and covers the period from 31 December 2023 to 1 June 2024.
- Political ad spending in Hungary is highly asymmetric. While the pro-government camp spent €4.3 million on Meta and Google ads, all 14 opposition parties and their associated media spent less than a fifth of that, €839,000.
- Fidesz and its politicians alone spent €2.0 million, 2.6 times more than all 14 opposition parties combined, which totaled €764,558.
- Fidesz’s campaign has been heavily supported by third parties, mainly two GONGOs, Megafon and Civil Union Forum, which spent an additional €2.3 million. In contrast, opposition proxies spent a total of €74,530.
- Government-organized media also played their part in the campaign, spending €1.8 million on advertising, although not exclusively on political issues. In contrast, independent media spent only €46,648.
- The level of online political advertising spending in Hungary is outstanding even by European standards. Fidesz was the biggest advertiser on Google in the EU this year, paying for six of the 10 most promoted videos. On Meta, Megafon ranked 10th and Fidesz 12th in the ranking of EU countries based on political ad spending data between 14 April and 13 May.
- Fidesz and its proxies are the main purveyors of hostile disinformation narratives in Hungary, responsible for 98.6% of the total €2.0 million spent on promoting such narratives. All opposition parties and their partisan media share the remaining 1.4%.
- The data confirm that Fidesz largely outsources its negative campaigning to third parties: while Fidesz’s proxies spent €1.6 million promoting narratives hostile to Fidesz’s political opponents, Fidesz spent only €397,137 directly.
- The most promoted hostile narrative in the whole period from 4 February to 1 June targeted the newly emerged opposition hopeful Péter Magyar, accounting for 46% of total spending on promoting such narratives.
- The second most promoted hostile narrative, accounting for 34% of total spending, concerns the war in Ukraine, suggesting that “European pro-war politicians and their Hungarian servants want to start World War III”. This narrative gradually grew in importance as the elections approached, overtaking and partly absorbing all other narratives in the final weeks.
- The third most promoted hostile narrative, accounting for 9% of total spending, is about anti-government forces allegedly serving foreign interests.
- The degree of social media dominance revealed by our investigation makes the political contest in Hungary truly one-sided and points to the problem of massive state-sponsored information manipulation in the EU and NATO.
- The dominance of anti-Western, pro-Kremlin hostile disinformation narratives promoted by the Fidesz camp is consistent with the findings of our recent study showing that Fidesz MEPs are “soft defenders” of Russia and other authoritarian regimes in the European Parliament, engaging in pro-Kremlin discourse while deliberately abstaining from voting due to political and reputational risks. Moreover, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Fidesz MEPs increasingly abstained from voting on Russia-related issues and even began to vote against resolutions condemning the Kremlin.
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