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Comment by mstade | Hacker News Reader

As a fellow European this is the biggest surprise of the election, I thought for sure he'd pull a Trump.

Pulling a Trump requires a polarized electorate where you are mostly going to have both parties in 48-52% range, with only real fights in few battleground states, and no absurd change in total vote %. Even Trump won't pull a Trump if other party was nearing 2/3rd majority. I am not even sure of what would happen to American politics if a party reaches 2/3rd majority in both houses, a list of long pending reforms might finally become possible.

Also an election system designed for horseback.

I think it's pretty damn brilliant. I see the failure to maintain it as intended as the real shortcoming.

If anyone can bring about enough disappointment and disgust for 2/3 of the population to vote Democrat, it is Trump.

It's worth noting that the party vote share here was 53% for Tisza vs. 44% for the even-more-right-wing parties. The fact that this results in a two thirds majority is because the electoral system inflates the strongest party. Orbán has previously achieved two thirds majorities multiple times while winning less than 50% of the party vote. Most seats are assigned not through party lists but in single-member constituencies with first-past-the-post voting, same as in America. So it's not "convince two thirds of the people to vote for you", it's "convince a very slim plurality in two thirds of the constituencies to vote for you".

Let's hope they fix that little loophole before the next election.

I'd like that. But this system is very attractive for the strongest party, so it will be a real test of their commitment to actually representative, multi-party democracy. Also, the general system (a mix of single-member constituencies and party list seats, with more of the former than the latter) isn't a Fidesz invention, it has a long legal tradition in Hungary. So there might be a lot of resistance to a purer party-list system on those grounds too.

Obvious tweaks exist, of course: Even if you keep more individual constituencies than party list seats, they should use some sort of instant runoff/ranked choice/etc. system. But other first past the post countries are dragging their feet on this too, so... we'll see.

It's a bit like computer security: you have to get it right all of the time and the perps mostly only need one shot at being lucky and then it will takes many years to undo the damage.

We should approach democracy more with the kind of insight that go into making computers secure. Oh, wait...

Getting arrested after losing an election? Or getting arrested as an opposition candidate in an election which he later won?

Seems like it was a clear reference to January 6.

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