BUDAPEST — As Hungary enters what is widely expected to be an aggressive campaign season, the ruling Fidesz party and far-right Jobbik appear to be in the process of switching places.

Unless the fractious leftist and liberal opposition parties band together, Hungary's spring 2018 election may end up as a contest between two nationalist, anti-migration, and largely pro-Russian parties.

But while Fidesz is adopting rhetoric once reserved for the fringes of the political spectrum, Jobbik is moving in the opposite direction, desperately trying to appeal to centrists and save itself from political irrelevance.

“A threatening demographic catastrophe is … being exacerbated by an ethnic proportional shift,” read Jobbik’s policy platform in 2010. At a time when it was still a political taboo to refer to ethnic homogeneity, it was the only party openly advocating for boosting Hungary’s white Christian population.

Seven years on, preserving the ethnic status quo is now the centerpiece of Orbán’s platform.

“Those who want to loosen the fabric of European culture and want a mixed population are serving a bad cause, and are acting against the will of the majority of Europeans and Hungarians,” Orbán said in a radio interview on July 21.

“By running the anti-Soros campaign, Fidesz attempts to collect Jobbik’s right-wing voters" — Gábor Vona, Jobbik leader

Hungarian politicians, including people in Orbán's own party, see adopting some far-right rhetoric and policies as part of his electoral strategy. Jobbik won 20 percent of the popular vote in 2014, and is currently the second-largest party in parliament after Fidesz.

“Orbán feared he would be attacked from the right” when the migration crisis began, said a senior Fidesz official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

So Orbán’s government built a fence along Hungary’s southern border and refused to participate in the EU’s migrant quota scheme. Opposition to migration became the main theme of every government speech and Orbán media appearance, sweeping aside most other policy issues.

“Politically it was a smart decision” to outflank Jobbik on migration policy, said the official, adding: “On other issues I would not characterize [Fidesz] as far right. It’s a Central European mixture.”

'No different from Jobbik'

For many of Orbán’s opponents, the prime minister’s stance on migration is just one sign that the line between what used to be regarded as a center-right party and the far right has blurred.

Fidesz is “not really different from Jobbik,” said Péter Juhász, the head of liberal opposition party Együtt.

Critics point to Fidesz’s decision to honor controversial World War II-era political figures, the party’s portrayal of Jewish Hungarian-born U.S. financier George Soros as a puppet master controlling all government critics and independent media, and the establishment of a day of remembrance for the 1920 Treaty of Trianon — where Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory — as proof that the ruling party is adopting nationalist, irredentist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric once primarily associated with Jobbik.

Orbán “adapts his political views to what he feels helps him most to get popular support,” said Géza Jeszenszky, a former conservative politician who served as foreign minister under Hungary’s first democratically elected government.

“As he is losing many centrist, center-right voters — due to his anti-Western, anti-solidarity policies — he feels he can win over more from the radical right,” he said.

Jobbik grows up

Outflanked by Fidesz on migration and faced with a government that has co-opted its nationalist rhetoric, Jobbik is trying to turn into a more mainstream force that appeals to disenchanted Fidesz supporters. Formally, the party now focuses on highlighting government corruption and promoting economic goals like a European wage union, rather than identity issues.

“Jobbik has matured from a radical niche party into a people’s party capable of governing the country, while Fidesz has changed from a governing people’s party into an extremist party that is willing to do anything for power,” Gábor Vona, Jobbik’s leader, wrote in a statement to POLITICO.

“By running the anti-Soros campaign, Fidesz attempts to collect Jobbik’s right-wing voters, while an increasingly large group of the civic, conservative intelligentsia is turning toward Jobbik,” he wrote.

But many voters don’t find Jobbik’s new stance convincing.

“There is no evidence that Jobbik is strengthening” as a result of its attempts to appeal to the center, said Bulcsú Hunyadi, a senior analyst at the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute, adding “there are big conflicts” within the party itself over its ideological identity and political future.

The party has not disavowed its openly racist members, and one Jobbik MP recently announced an initiative to take away voting rights from citizens who don’t have an elementary school diploma, a move widely seen as an effort to disenfranchise members of the Roma minority.

Appealing to voters’ fears

As Fidesz moves further to the right, some far-right ideas are also resonating with a large segment of Hungarian voters.

Fidesz’s control of all regional media outlets, state media and the vast majority of private national news outlets has helped the party shape the thinking of much of the population: Articles and television segments on the threats allegedly posed by Muslim migrants and George Soros are featured prominently in both state-owned and Fidesz-controlled private media.

At the same time, experts like Hunyadi at Political Capital believe Orbán is adroitly appealing to long-standing fears within Hungarian society.

“There is very strong anti-migrant sentiment across society. Most Hungarians have never seen a refugee. It’s a symbolic fear,” said Hunyadi. “The political role of the anti-Soros campaign is the same as the anti-refugee campaign … The population is very anti-foreign and anti-minority.”

The only country surveyed where respondents were almost as nationalist as Hungarians was Greece.

The impact can be seen in opinion polls.

In a spring 2017 survey of 38 countries, the Pew Research Center found Hungary was the only country where a “large number of refugees leaving countries like Iraq and Syria” was deemed the biggest threat.

Hungarians’ fears differ from countries that host a large number of asylum seekers: In Italy, respondents pointed to the Islamic State as the top threat to their country; in Greece, it was the state of the global economy.

A Pew survey one year earlier found that Hungarians are more nationalist than some of their European counterparts. When asked whether being born in the country is very important for being truly Hungarian, 52 percent of Hungarians said yes — compared to 42 percent of Italians, 42 percent of Poles, 25 percent of French and 13 percent of Germans.

The only country surveyed where respondents were almost as nationalist as Hungarians was Greece, where 50 percent of respondents said being born in Greece is very important for being truly Greek.

But experts and officials believe that despite the population’s fears and the prevalence of prejudice, voters overall reject far-right ideology.

“Opinion polls show that the absolute majority of Hungarians still oppose extremism,” said a former conservative politician, who spoke on condition of anonymity.