This Sunday’s turnout has broken a record before the closing of the polling stations. The first data released by the authorities, at 7:00 a.m., almost doubled the participation in the 2022 elections, with 3.4% this morning compared to 1.8% four years ago. At 5:00 p.m., 74.23% of voters had already voted, compared to 62.92% in 2022. Tisza, the opposition party, maintains that this very high influx of voters, at least for now, is registered in districts that, in principle, are favorable to defeat the current prime minister, the ultranationalist and pro-Russian Viktor Orbán. According to their forecasts, they could reach a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
The candidates voted early in the morning in Budapest. Orbán faces his most difficult elections and with the polls against him. His campaign closing rally on Saturday had a modest feel in size, participants and euphoria. Magyar, on the other hand, closed in style, with a massive event and an audience overflowing with hope.
In a message on social networks in the morning, the ultra-conservative prime minister continued campaigning. It needs three million supports. “Hungary has shown that there is another way: we can stop illegal immigration. We can defend families and our way of life. We can choose peace instead of war,” he wrote. “They cannot take away our sovereignty. We will shape our own future,” he added.
Magyar did the same and encouraged participation. “East or west? More backwardness and a disintegrating State or a country that functions and is humane? Corruption or clean public life?” he asked the Hungarians, among other questions.
Nerves are on edge, until the schools close at seven in the afternoon and the data begins to arrive. In Tisza there is fear of some last-minute movement from around Fidesz, Orbán’s party. Magyar—who was part of that party until he broke with the prime minister in 2024—warned this in his last speech: he said that he had access to information that those loyal to the Government could be planning, that is, some type of attack or disruptive action that they try to attribute to the rival.
The prime minister’s entourage, for its part, raised the fear that Tisza voters would not accept the result and would march from their electoral headquarters this Sunday to the prime minister’s office, if the vote count was not favorable to them.
Speculation adds tension to a day full of expectations. Szilvia Tivadari, 33-year-old project director, expressed that “anxiety and tension” that runs through many after casting their vote for Tisza at the polling station on Dob Street in Budapest, in the old Jewish quarter. “Really, we need a change now, and this is the closest we have gotten in recent years,” she said, hopefully.
At Polymarket, the prediction market based on blockchainaround 2:00 p.m., 87% of users were betting on Magyar as the next Hungarian prime minister, compared to 14% who chose Orbán.
The level of mobilization is “unusually high” and the electoral scenario is “highly tense,” stated a summary of the situation sent by Tisza at 1:00 p.m. Polls prior to the vote consistently predicted a victory for Magyar’s party, which widened as Sunday approached.
Hungary elects 199 deputies this Sunday. Of them, 106 are elected in single-person constituencies by simple majority, and 93, through national party lists. Some 35 districts in rural areas can decide the outcome of the elections. In the countryside, Fidesz’s clientelism and pressures reach an almost feudal nature, analysts describe.
The pressure to vote for Orbán’s party, and even the buying of votes, are practices that have been documented for a long time and that other parties have also used in the past. This Sunday, Tisza interveners and civil society organizations have identified some of the common illegal practices, such as organizing the arrival of buses to the voting centers.
