Rebellious youth – do they exist?

Many people already had exaggerated expectations about the youngest voters, saying that young people’s votes will result in a change of government – this obvious error of judgment had also been discussed by us beforehand. The total number of nearly 400,000 people who received the right to vote for the first time on April 3, 2022, is not too large compared to the approximately 8 million adults and the 5-6 million votes cast by them. As a result, there was no basis for heightened expectations regarding young people before the elections, and even less so after the elections.

The results of the elections surprised pollsters; even the estimate of Társadalomkutató Kft., which was closest to the actual results, did not count on such a significant defeat of the united opposition. Knowing the results, the question of how the youth, who were often characterized by an oppositional attitude, voted on April 3, 2022, became even more exciting. The Youth Research Institute, in cooperation with Társadalomkutató Kft., sought the answer to this in a public opinion survey conducted in May-June 2022. The survey was conducted by interviewing 1,000 people in person (TAPI) and selecting a sample from a representative address list. The target group consisted of young people aged 18–21 who could participate in the parliamentary elections on April 3, 2022, for the first time.

Undoubtedly, there are rebellious young people, but the majority voted for the ruling parties

During the research, we dealt with several topics related to political socialization and activity, but the most important question was who the young people voted for. The results of the research show that about half (49 percent) of Hungarian youth aged 18-21 who participated in the elections voted for the Fidesz-KDNP party list, while only slightly more than a fifth (22%) voted for the joint list of the opposition. This means that, contrary to some preliminary expectations, the united opposition failed to appeal to young voters, as their support for the opposition alliance was less than the actual list result of 34.4 percent. The actual result of the governing parties is also similar among first-time voters; compared to the final result of Fidesz-KDNP, there is only a difference of a few percentage points among first-time voters (52.5 vs. 49 percent). Among the smaller parties, compared to its 5.9 percent result on the national list, the Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk Mozgalom) performed slightly better among first-time voters, 8 percent of whom voted for the party that entered the parliament for the first time. Based on first-time voters, the other parties on the ballot would not have crossed the parliamentary threshold either. The Two-Tailed Dog Party (Kétfarkú Kutyapárt) performed similarly to its list result of 3.3 percent among first-time voters (3 percent), while the Solution Movement (Megoldás Mozgalom) fared better (2 percent).

A more detailed analysis shows that even this relatively narrow social group is not uniform; significant differences can be observed, for example, according to the respondent’s settlement type. The results – in line with the experiences of previous research – show that the support for the governing parties is greater in smaller settlements, while in the capital the united opposition ranks higher than the average. The Two-Tailed Dog Party can claim 8 percent support among young people in Budapest, while the Our Homeland Movement is slightly stronger than average in the county seats.

The first voting experience can crush passivity

The activity of first-time voters is a particularly important issue because the basic experience of youth behavior is passivity in political matters. Young people are basically not interested in (party) politics, and participation in elections is also lower compared to older generations. In the research on first-time voters, 7 percent of those surveyed are very interested in politics, while almost four times as many (25 percent) are not interested in politics at all. Seven-tenths of the surveyed first-time voters claimed to have participated in the elections, which is almost the same as the official participation of 70.2 percent. Of course, the high degree of similarity between the two ratios does not allow us to conclude the authenticity of the research; based on the estimate of the participation of the first-time voters, however, the hypothesis can be formulated that the young people, who produce a lower turnout than the national average, could have been mobilized by the opportunity to vote for the first time. Therefore, the two opposite effects may have canceled each other out on April 3, 2022. Even in this relatively narrow cohort, we see a difference in the level of participation based on age. The older stratum we examine, the higher participation rates we can register. To mention only the two extremes, 66 percent of 18-year-olds and 73 percent of 21-year-olds said they voted in parliamentary elections.

The research also highlights that during the opposition primary election, information about the passivity of young people proved to be correct, and the opposition was unable to meaningfully reach out to first-time voters. About one-sixth (58 percent) of 18-21-year-olds stated that they had already decided which party they would vote for long before the elections. Less than a fifth of respondents (18 percent) were influenced by the primary election campaign in making their decision, and roughly the same number (17 percent) said that during the election campaign, they decided who they were going to vote for. The remainder typically decided on the day of the election.

The role of social media in orientation is outstanding

The typically low interest in public life and political activity directs attention to the forms of gaining information, where we can see that first-time voters are characterized less by conscious orientation and more by exposure to political content. The research clearly points to the outstanding role of social media in relation to political content. A third of first-time voters (32 percent) primarily obtain information on political issues from social media; a similar proportion primarily use the online press for public information (28 percent), while for every fifth respondent television is the primary source (20 percent), and the proportion of young people who primarily receive information from family members is significant (12 percent). Only a small proportion of young people claimed that they get information primarily from friends, acquaintances, radio, or the printed press.

Among social media platforms, Facebook is also the most important for the first-time voters (89 percent use it at least daily), but TikTok is also clearly taking up space (57 percent daily user rate). In addition to intentional content consumption, the consumption of political content – which young people prefer not to be interested in – also characterizes the respondents. Every second respondent (51 percent) comes across public news on Facebook at least daily, nearly three-tenths of them (28 percent) on YouTube, while every fourth respondent (24 percent) uses the TikTok platform.

The important experience of the research on first-time voters is that, although young people prefer not to be interested in politics, they can still be reached and encouraged to be active, primarily with the help of social media. First-time voters supported the government parties to an extent similar to election results, while support for the opposition was much smaller among them than the actual result.