Either way, the sharp economic collapse expected in some parts didn't come, and I think this is reflected in polls – check the small upticks in the fourth (job rating of the government) and fifth diagram (what direction is the country going in) in Medián's September poll report. If many supporters are content with moderate recession (-0.7% in Q1 and -1.3% in Q2 vs. the year before) and it won't get radically worse, then I don't see Fidesz's support base melting away (as hoped by many in the Green party, LMP).

Then, as things stand, with the record level of people without party preference (i.e. in practice non-voters; 46% in the above poll), the parties of the republican opposition still add up to less than Orbán's Fidesz; and then there is the far-right Jobbik, the Fidesz-biased election system and the voter suppression attempt in the form of the introduction of registration. As much as I dislike Bajnai for his IMF-faithful austerity policies, this makes me less interested in the person of an eventual joint PM candidate (and I don't think either the person of Bajnai or a campaign framing as a decision between him and Orbán could draw many current non-voters).

The republican opposition is as divided as ever. LMP still has these strategists who say hoping to attract non-voters is illusory, but I think their strategy of drawing conservatives disenchanted by Fidesz is just senseless. The Socialists (MSzP) stabilized their support, confirming my view that they won't go away as the only force with a serious grass-roots organization, and that recently leaked strategy document indicates that they still expect a bipartisan structure on the long term. I don't condone Facebook protest organizers Milla for reacting to this as they did, but I think they shouldn't have done it in the call for the protest on 23 October.

Returning to my initial theme, what I miss is a notion that the IMF will have to be confronted but differently than the way Orbán did. (In that leaked MSzP document, there is also talk about focusing the campaign on the concerns of the "little man" in the tradition of former PM Gyula Horn instead of macroeconomic arguments, but from that it is not clear what they would do.) From this follows something which should have been a central point in the rhetoric of the republican opposition: with their austerity-not-to-be-called-austerity and vilification of the poor and needy and the jobless, the Orbán government is giving us an IMF programme without the IMF.

In short, the situation is hopeless :-) Still, at worst, what the next round of protests can achieve is strengthening a sense of defiance in a minority that might at one time organise a majority.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}