Opposition leader Péter Magyar advances with an advantage in . With 45% of the votes counted, the candidate of the Tisza party obtains 135 seats, compared to the 57 of the current prime minister, the ultranationalist and pro-Russian Viktor Orbán, who has been in power for 16 years.
The Chamber has 199 and would be completed with deputies from the far-right party My Hazánk (our homeland).
From the first hour of this Sunday compared to recent elections. The first data released by the electoral authorities, at 7:00, 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. the historical maximum was broken and at 6:30 p.m., half an hour before the polls closed, 77.8% of the 7.5 million registered voters had already voted. The maximum mobilization after the fall of communism was recorded in 2002, with 70.53%. Tisza sources maintained after the polls closed that their models point to a two-thirds victory. If confirmed it would be a historic defeat for the current prime minister.
Tisza’s candidate has been “cautiously optimistic” given the data provided by the latest polls taken before election day, which give him victory. After 7:00 p.m., Gergely Gulyás, Orbán’s chief of staff, was confident in his victory and assured that the high participation was due to the mobilization of Fidesz.
The candidates voted early in the morning in Budapest. Orbán yesterday faced his most difficult elections after four consecutive terms 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 to secure the three million supports he needs. “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 on social media. “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.
The nerves were on edge. In Tisza there was fear of some last-minute movement from around Fidesz, Orbán’s party. Magyar — who was part of that formation 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. This Sunday sources close to the formation warned again: “Fidesz raises the tone of the chaos and the story of the ‘stolen elections’.”
The prime minister’s entourage, for its part, raised fears that Tisza voters would not accept the result and would march from their electoral headquarters to the prime minister’s office if the vote count was not favorable to them.
The speculation added tension to a day full of expectations. Szilvia Tivadari, 33-year-old project director, expressed that “anxiety and tension” that ran 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 elected 199 deputies yesterday. Of them, 106 are decided in single-person constituencies by simple majority, and 93, through national party lists. Some 35 districts in rural areas could 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. Yesterday, Tisza interveners and civil society organizations identified some of the common illegal practices, such as organizing the arrival of buses to the voting centers.
International impact
The result of the polls will also be crucial for the EU and other international actors. Russia and China were gambling on having an emissary capable of using the right of veto at the European Council table, sacrificing the interests of their partners for those of their Eastern allies. The United States has opted for Orbán as its best recruit to advance the objective declared in last December’s National Security Strategy of strengthening ultraconservative and national-populist movements in the face of what it considers the civilizational decline of the EU.
In turn, the illiberal system built by Orbán, an example for these far-right movements, submitted to . The liberal international has in Hungary not only a symbolic leader, but also a source of economic and intellectual support.
For the European Union, Orbán’s victory or defeat tests the institutional architecture and great liberal democratic values on which it is based. But it is also an examination of their resistance to external revisionist actors. The unity that Europe needs more than ever to build a strong and relevant voice in an unstable geopolitical landscape of hard powers depends on what Hungary decides.
Ukraine is also risking the support it needs to continue defending itself from the large-scale Russian invasion. In this campaign, Orbán once again used the strategy of instilling fear in the population and on this occasion he chose Ukraine as the main threat and enemy. A great spoiler of aid to kyiv, the pro-Russian prime minister has frequently used his right to veto. The most recent and critical case was the blocking of the 90,000 euro credit to save Ukraine from bankruptcy.
The complaints of Moscow’s interference in the elections have been permanent. Orbán-controlled media and bot armies on social media have spread the usual Russian propaganda to generate misinformation, fear and division among voters. Information from foreign intelligence services also warned of the presence of Russian operatives in Budapest willing to go beyond the cognitive spectrum, with false flag operations.
The US Administration of Donald Trump has also done everything possible to keep its biggest ally in the EU in power. The president published several messages of support, linked his economic support for Hungary to Orbán’s victory, and .
Magyar, who does not arouse personal sympathies among many of his followers, the vast majority of whom are ideologically opposed to him, breathed hope for change. The electoral system favors Fidesz, especially in rural areas, but for a few days, in the last part of the campaign, it seemed that it could get around it.
