Viktor Orbán, the heavily right-leaning politician who has served as the prime minister of Hungary for the past 16 years in a row, was defeated in a landslide election on Sunday, April 12. The opposition leader, Péter Magyar, head of the Tisza party, won over two-thirds of the vote. Preliminary election results, with 98.9% of the vote counted, some votes remaining to be counted, coming from nationals living abroad, showed that the Magyar Tisza Party had won more than two-thirds majority in the national assembly. Of the 199 seats in the national assembly, 138 are now Tisza, 55 are Fidesz, and 6 have gone to Our Homeland, a small far-right political party. This means that Magyar and the Tisza Party have a supermajority in the assembly, allowing them to make sweeping changes in the months to come. At least 133 seats of the supermajority are required to make changes to the constitution.
Hungary holds parliamentary elections once every four years, during which the members of parliament, or national assembly, are elected by voters. The prime minister is then formally elected by the national assembly — this is typically the leader of the majority party after parliamentary elections. As Hungary has no term limit like the United States, Orbán has been in power for the past sixteen years, a term that has been marked by increasing corruption and gerrymandering, the practice of manipulating electoral district lines to give one political party an unfair advantage. Public sentiment in Hungary has increasingly turned against Orbán in recent years, and there has been increasing frustration with his policies, domestic and international. As reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), during his speech in front of the parliament in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, Magyar said, “Together, we brought down the Orbán regime. Together we liberated Hungary.”
Orbán’s regime has been called an “electoral autocracy,” says the BBC, and corruption ran rampant as Orbán funneled money to his cronies through a system of patronage called Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere (NER) and appointed his friends to powerful positions. According to the Cato Institute, the Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Hungary very close to China, Cuba, and South Africa—shocking for a country in the European Union (EU). The media became less and less free after Orbán’s election in 2010 as the government took control of large portions of public television and journalism. The Fidesz government spoke of LGBTQ rights as a threat to children and banned adoption by same-sex couples. In 2024, there was a domestic uproar over a scandal involving Fidesz’s presidential pardon of a man convicted of covering up child sex abuse.
The end of Orbán’s regime is not just a big moment for Hungarians, but an impactful event on the world stage as well. The former prime minister had close ties with both Russia and China, pointing to their dictatorships as role models for successful countries. He has consistently supported Vladimir Putin during the war with Ukraine, trying to prevent or slow down EU sanctions against Russia. He is an ally of Donald Trump, who has viewed Orbán as a great example of conservative government. According to PBS News, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance even personally visited Hungary a few days before the elections in support of Orbán. Magyar’s victory last Sunday is going to push Hungary in a new direction, as he has pledged to rebuild Hungary’s relationships with the EU, Ukraine, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Magyar’s promises also involve reversing the corruption and patronage system of NER, as well as specifically improving the healthcare and education systems in Hungary. He has also said that he wants to institute a two-term limit for prime ministers in Hungary. Sunday night saw people in Budapest jubilantly celebrating in their homes and on the streets, chanting and waving Hungarian flags, toasting with champagne. Public sentiment is very hopeful for the new leader, even those who voted for him only because they wanted to vote against Orbán, rather than a direct desire to support Magyar. The inaugural session of parliament and the start of his term are expected to occur on or before May 12.
