Did the Losers Really Win? An Analysis of Electoral Behavior in Hungary in 1994

Hungarian behavior during the 1994 elections is used to challenge purveying deep-freeze theories blaming citizen unrest on a historical buildup of state-inflicted aggravation. An attempt is made to identify the portions of the Hungarian population who helped successors to the Communist Party win the elections, drawing on (1) sociodemographic data gathered from a poll of 1,000 voters from Hungary's six major political parties during the Apr 1994 elections; (2) a 1995 poll (N = 1,500 respondents) to track public anomie regarding market developments since 1991; & (3) a comparison of levels of trust between Hungarian Socialist Party members & the rest of the electoral body. By following attitudes among all voting groups, a number of different attitude coalitions were shown to have developed as a result of random & momentary political events. 1 Table, 3 Diagrams, 5 References. D. Bajo