Parliamentary elections were held in
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
on 28 and 29 May 1939.
[ Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p899 ] The result was a victory for the
Party of Hungarian Life The Unity Party is the name of several political parties around the world, including:
Current-day parties with that name include:
*Unity Party (Australia)
* Unity Party (Azerbaijan)
*Unity Party (Hungary, 2009)
* Unity (Haiti) (''Inite''), est. 20 ...
, which won 181 of the 260 seats in Parliament (72 percent of the parliament's seats) and won 49 percent of the popular vote in the election.
Pál Teleki
Count Pál János Ede Teleki de Szék (1 November 1879 – 3 April 1941) was a Hungarian politician who served as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1920 to 1921 and from 1939 to 1941. He was also an expert in geography, a un ...
remained Prime Minister.
[Georgi Karasimeonov. Cleavages, parties, and voters: studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999. Pp. 70.]
This was a major breakthrough for the
far-right in Hungary;
[ between them, far-right parties were officially credited with 49 seats and 25 percent of the vote.]
This was the closest thing to a free election that Hungary had seen at that point. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, the far right bloc would have almost certainly won more seats had the election been conducted in a truly fair manner, and possibly garnered an "approximately equal" seat count and vote share with the Party of Hungarian Life.[Payne, p. 275]
Electoral system
The electoral system was changed from that used in 1935. The number of single-member constituencies was reduced from 199 to 135, whilst the number of multi-member constituencies was raised from 11 to 38.[Nohlen & Stöver, pp920-921][Nohlen & Stöver, p933] Additionally, the franchise had been significantly expanded, with all men over 26 and all women over 30 now allowed to vote.
Results
The number of votes refers to only 125 of the 135 single-member constituencies, as 10 seats were uncontested.[
The number of votes refers to 36 of the 38 MMCs as two were uncontested.][
The total number of registered voters was 4,629,493; the figure in the table refers to the number of registered voters in the contested seats.][
]
References
{{Hungarian elections
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
Elections in Hungary
1939 in Hungary
May 1939 events
hu:Magyarországi országgyűlési választások a Horthy-rendszerben#Az 1939-es választások