Lagging some 25 percentage points behind Mr Orbán is MDF's candidate Lajos Bokros with 15 percentage points. Socialist nominee Attila Mesterházy scored 7 per cent while extreme rightwing Jobbik's chairman-candidate Gábor Vona at 5. It is interesting to note that Messrs Bokros, Mesterházy and Vona all have a support different from their backing parties and that 34 per cent of self-declared socialist voters still think Mr Bokros would be the right person to be Hungary's next Prime Minister.

Party preferences - No major changes took place in party preferences in January 2010 compared with December last year. Likely voters still prefer Fidesz by a 35 percentage point margin to socialists (47-12) while MDF is constantly at 3 per cent among the decided electorate. Extreme rightwing Jobbik continues to seem a sure member of the next parliament with a 9 per cent support. Some 28 per cent of those who said would "definitely" participate in the elections are either undecided about their choice of party or did not want to answer. Based on this group of voters, about 1 million people, Perspective Institute attempted to find the "potential" electorate of each party by asking secondary questions to those likely voters who said they did not know which party they would vote for or who said they did not want to answer the question. Based on their answers, MSZP has a potential electorate of 20 per cent, Fidesz of 54, Jobbik of 16 and MDF of 8, meaning the small party would make it to parliament based on this maximum percentage point. Using the parties' potential electorate, parliamentary seats could calculated and it was found that Fidesz would reach 267 seats, 9 more than is require for a two-thirds majority. Jobbik would have 46, the socialists 54 and MDF 19 seats.

Sample and Method - The interviews were conducted between 18-20th January 2010 by telephone on a nationwide representative sample. N=1000. The margin of error is maximum plus or minus 3.2 percent, with different margins or error for subgroups.