Campaign Effects in the 1994 and 1998 Parliamentary Elections in Hungary

A surprisingly widely shared but empirically untested consensus among political commentators depicts campaign effects and the most important traits of the campaign efforts of the major parties in the 1994 and 1998 Hungarian elections approximately like this:
Both campaigns were fought nearly exclusively in the mass media and on billboards. The main government parties claimed credit for their supposedly good performance in office and pre-election improvements in economic conditions, but offered little fuel for policy-oriented prospective voting. Public television was a good partner in this both because of the pro-government bias of its news programs and because of the unappealing format of its campaign programs that turned off voters and probably made it difficult for the opposition to get more elaborate messages through.