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research companies can be determined by identifying the politics of the newspaper or
magazine in which their results are published. More generally, the leading directors and
public opinion researchers belong to the formal or informal circles of communication
advisors of the party leaders or members of the government. While adhering to the
professional requirements of public opinion research, the independence of these
companies seems to be a myth in the polarised and over-politicised public life of the
country. By providing regular surveys of the changing political mood and opinion of
the public, the polling companies can be considered as background institutions to the
decision-making processes of the main parties and, in some ways, not unlike the
advisory groups that surrounded every party and government in the past (Pesti, 2000).
Before the mid 1990s few advisers specialising explicitly (or exclusively) in
communication were in evidence and, although their numbers subsequently increased,
they were often selected on the basis of their political contacts and relationships with
the media rather than for their abilities to influence public opinion, i.e. their
professionalism.

PROFESSIONALISATION OF COMMUNICATION – PARTY ORGANISATION AND
COMMUNICATION
At the time of the political transition it was feared that voters would be split amongst
too many parties, and that too many parties entering Parliament might endanger its
operation. Accordingly, the Hungarian electoral system was developed in a way that is
advantageous to the larger parties, and thus the concentration of the political party
system was literally encoded into the electoral and party legislation. During the initial
period of the political transition more than 70 parties competed for votes but only 6
were elected to the first free Parliament. Over a period of 15 years not only did the
number of parties go down from 6 to 4, but by 2004 one could speak of Hungary as a
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
quasi two-party system: on one side the ‘successor’ Hungarian Socialist Party on the
other side the national-Christian-conservatives dominated by the Young Democrats. 1

As a rule, the elections were not won by the opposition forces alone. The incumbent
governmental coalitions, which either used only extremely negative campaign
methods (in 1994) or did not campaign at all in the beginning of the campaign period
(in 1998 or 2002), also helped their opponents to victory. Often the challengers helped
their cause by using new methods of campaigning techniques. Examples include, in
1998, the use of automated telephone calls combined with an automatic answering
programme and with an audible message delivered by the challengers Fidesz party’s
leader,or the Direct Mail,e-mail and SMS messages used by the Socialists in 2002.

The peculiarity of the Hungarian election campaign system, with its two cycles,
intensifies the competition between the first and second cycle, especially when the
results are in the balance and there is cut-throat competition. In this short two-week
period, aggressive and dramatic campaign methods are used, and only the short-term
aim of winning is important. One of the results of such a tense situation was the
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