Hungarians go to the polls on April 12th and could give the majority of votes to the new center-right group Respect and Freedom Party (Tisza), but this may not necessarily represent the end of the 16 years in a row of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, from the Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) party.
The explanation is that the far-right leader is “playing with regulations under his arm”, an electoral rule book that he himself helped write. Therefore, Orbán can win even if he loses.
The latest surveys by independent institutes show that Tisza currently has something close to 53% of the votes, while Fidesz has around 39% of the preferences. Electoral studies commissioned by Orbán’s party show a much smaller difference between political groups, with an advantage for Fidesz.
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The reason the ruling party maintains its hopes for continuity is that electoral legislation has been modified and rewritten by Orbán over the last 15 years.
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Hungary’s right-wing leader returned to power in 2010 and since then the number of seats in Parliament has been reduced from 386 to 199. Furthermore, the two-round selection system has been replaced by a hybrid structure: 106 deputies are chosen from single-member districts and 93 through a national proportional system.
Voters vote on two ballots: one for a party list and one for a candidate in their local constituency. Thus, even if the opposition wins the national list vote, it could still lose if the governing party dominates the disputes in smaller constituencies.
Analysts say Hungary’s political geography still favors Fidesz. Tisza appears strong in Budapest and larger cities, but Orbán’s party dominates rural Hungary, including smaller towns and cities in the east and south. As more than half of parliamentary seats are decided in individual electoral districts, rural victories carry enormous weight. Winning a district by a few hundred votes counts the same as winning by tens of thousands.
According to political analyst István Hegedűs of TVP World, Fidesz changed the system many times until it finally managed to introduce a “system that helps the biggest party.”
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An additional mechanism increases this advantage: under Hungarian “winner compensation” rules, votes cast for losing candidates in individual districts are added to a party’s national list. Finally, excess votes for winning candidates are also transferred to the list. This means that the stronger a party performs in electoral districts, the more additional list votes it receives.
Regarding Orbán’s competitor, Tisza was created in 2020 and has been led since 2024 by Péter Magyar, a former ally of the prime minister. One of the main strengths of his campaign is to present himself as an alternative to the old bipolar dynamic between Fidesz–KDNP and the left-wing opposition, which Magyar considers partially responsible for the lack of political alternation in the country.
In other words, Tisza does not represent a sharp break with Fidesz’s position, as it continues to embrace traditional national values and defend social union, but with a moderate speech and less confrontation with the European Union.
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The new party’s political debut took place in the European elections of June 2024, when Tisza won 30% of the vote, entitled to 7 of Hungary’s 21 seats in the European Parliament.
If the party manages to break through the electoral barriers, the parliamentary elections on the 12th could change Hungary’s future within the EU, since Orbán is a first-time ally of Donald Trump and a thorn in the side of the European Union, especially as he has become an obstacle to the bloc’s aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
In addition to the challenge at the polls, Magyar’s moderate party may not gain enough support in Parliament to form a cabinet and be chosen as the new prime minister, given the strength that Fidesz will still have in the legislative house.
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Orbán’s Hungary has also been the target of scrutiny from European institutions for the regression of democratic standards. One of November 2025, approved by a large majority in the European Parliament, states that the country has transformed into a ‘hybrid regime of electoral autocracy’.
At the end of last year, an infringement procedure was opened by the European Commission due to the country’s failure to comply with several provisions of European media freedom legislation and specific requirements set out in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.
