Is Hungarian Leader Viktor Orbán, an Icon of the Far Right, About to Be Ousted by Voters?
· Time
Voters will head to the polls on Sunday to cast their ballots in Hungary’s general election—the results of which will have profound implications for the country, the European Union, and beyond.
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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has led Hungary since 2010, but recent polling indicates that he is now at risk of losing power: most polls show that his ruling party, Fidesz, is trailing behind the opposition party, Tisza, by a significant margin.
Orbán, who has cast himself as a proponent of “illiberal democracy,” is an icon of the global far-right, and viewed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a MAGA ally—so much so that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance joined Orbán in Budapest on Tuesday, in an effort to boost the Prime Minister’s flailing campaign just days before the general election. Vance said that Orbán was “wise and smart” and that his leadership “can provide a model to the Continent.”
Orbán has governed the nation with no significant challengers for more than a decade, and if his party were to lose the race on Sunday, it would mark a stunning political shift in a country that the European Parliament has said “can no longer be considered a full democracy.”
“It’s a very important election for what it means for Europe, what it means for Ukraine, but also what it means for the broader far-right movement around the world, which has built up Hungary as the kind of far-right, illiberal ‘democratic model’ where you have an elected autocracy pushing back against migrants and against supposedly woke values,” says Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Here’s what to know about the possible ramifications of this election.
What the election could mean for Hungary
In the years since he first rose to become Prime Minister, Orbán and his party have taken control of Hungary’s media outlets and deployed propaganda to vilify his political opponents, as well as consolidated their power over institutions intended to serve as checks on executive authority, such as the country’s courts.
In 2022, the European Parliament said that Hungary has become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy,” meaning that, while the country holds elections, “respect for democratic norms and standards is absent.”
Bergmann says that Hungary is considered by many to be “one of the most corrupt countries now in the European Union.”
“[Orbán has] utterly changed the nature of Hungarian democracy where it basically revolves around him,” Bergmann says. “He has run Hungary as if it were his fiefdom.”
But polls now show Orbán’s party trailing behind the opposition party, which Bergmann attributes at least in part to voters’ growing frustration and concerns regarding corruption in Hungary.
Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, has been able to bring together Orbán’s critics, ranging from voters on the far left to those on the right who have become disgruntled with the Prime Minister, Bergmann says. Magyar is a conservative, and was previously part of Orbán’s party before splitting off in 2024. He has pledged to implement anti-corruption reforms in the country if elected.
Zsuzsanna Végh, a political analyst at the German Marshall Fund, calls this “a milestone election” for Hungary; if Magyar's party wins the election, it would signify Hungarian voters’ rejection of Orbán’s far-right movement.
“With this new challenger rising—Péter Magyar’s Tisza party—there is a realistic chance to oust Orbán and potentially reform the country to halt the autocratization that we have seen over the past decade and a half and return to a more democratic way of governance and just generally operation of the state,” Végh says.
“Over the past decade and a half, what we have seen is that after every single election, this government has radicalized further and further,” she continues. “We are really at a point where if radicalization continues with all the pressure and threats against critical voices and the opposition, the civil society, media, that we may start to move into repression from intimidation. So I think this is really a milestone election and the consequences in either direction will be very significant.”
Whether Magyar will follow through on the reforms he has promised if his party wins the election remains to be seen, and also depends on how much of a majority he can secure in parliament, Végh says. If his party wins a two-thirds majority, he “would have almost a free hand to actually reform the country,” she says. If the party only earns a simple majority, it would be more challenging for Magyar to implement significant institutional reforms.
But Végh also notes that how Magyar responds to criticism will be “a measurement of his democratic character … that doesn’t depend on really having the constitutional majority.”
“He does not need a two-thirds majority to break with the sort of polarizing, populist rhetoric that Orbán effectively made the center of Hungarian public discourse,” she says. If Magyar is elected, and he responds “to critiques in a different way, if he accepts accountability, that will be an important indicator of how much of a democrat he can really be.”
“Orbán doesn’t take criticism; Orbán tries to silence critical voices by putting pressure on independent media, civil society, other political parties,” Végh continues. “You don’t need a two-thirds majority to approach plurality, diversity of views differently.”
What the election could mean for the EU
Under Orbán’s leadership, Hungary’s relationship with the EU has grown increasingly contentious over the years. The Prime Minister has “become a thorn in the side of the European Union,” Bergmann says, often using his veto power in a way that has hindered the EU’s response to various issues, particularly the war in Ukraine. Hungary has, for instance, blocked the EU’s attempts to impose sanctions against Russia over the war, as well as to support Ukraine.
“Effectively, over the past years, the Hungarian government have been blocking EU decision making, have been hampering the EU’s ability to really act as a global power,” Végh says. “I think that if [Orbán] stays in power, then this behavior will continue; there is no indication that it would change.”
If Magyar's party wins the election, though, Végh says that she expects “that there would be a change, and a Tisza government would approach the European Union much more constructively.”
Magyar’s party “positions Hungary as a member of the EU that wants to be a member of the EU, that wants to cooperate, that wants to use this framework to the benefit of the country, instead of undermining the joint action of the union,” Végh says.
Magyar told The Associated Press that, if his party wins the election, he would work to mend the country’s fractured relationship with the bloc, saying that he thinks the general election “will be a referendum on our country’s place in the world.”
But Bergmann acknowledges that “there’s a lot of uncertainty about Péter Magyar and where he’ll actually position himself.”
With regards to Ukraine, Végh says she expects that “Magyar will not veto outright.”
“He would not be representing Russian interests in the EU’s decision making process, and that is already a huge shift” from Orbán, Végh says.
If Magyar upholds his pledge to implement anti-corruption reforms in Hungary, that could also help repair the country’s relationship with the EU, since much of the tension in the relationship stemmed from the rise of corruption in Hungary, Végh says. In 2022, the EU began suspending billions of dollars in funding to Hungary over violations of the bloc’s rule-of-law standards.
Experts tell TIME that Hungary’s struggling economy is one of the reasons that Orbán’s party is polling poorly in this election. If Magyar's party wins the election, implements his promised reforms, and repairs Hungary’s relationship with the EU, then the bloc would likely release funding for the country, which “will create an economic windfall,” Bergmann says. How much funding the EU releases to Hungary, Végh says, depends on the extent of reforms made if Magyar's party wins the election.
New leadership in Hungary could also lead to conversations about making changes to the EU’s governing rules. The EU needs to have unanimity among its 27 member nations in order to take action on certain issues—a rule that some have criticized as one that, at times, can limit the union’s effectiveness.
“The hope, I think, for Europe is that if this election goes the other way and Orbán were to leave, that then you could begin to have conversations about reforming the EU and making it work better,” Bergmann says.
Could Trump and Vance’s support for Orbán impact the election?
At a rally in Hungary on Tuesday, Vance called Trump and put the phone on speaker so the audience could hear the American President as he commended Orbán, particularly over Orbán’s anti-immigrant policies. Trump described Orbán as “a fantastic man” and said the Hungarian Prime Minister “did not allow people to storm your country and invade your country like the people have and ruined other countries.”
“I’m a big fan of Viktor,” Trump said. “I’m with him all the way.”
It’s unclear what, if any, impact Trump and Vance’s endorsements of Orbán could have on Hungarian voters at this point. Polling shows that Trump is a polarizing politician among people in Hungary: 46% of people in the country have little to no confidence in him as a world leader, while 53% have some or a lot of confidence in him, according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center last June.
Both Végh and Bergmann said they didn’t think the American politicians’ efforts to promote Orbán would be effective.
“I don’t think that this is going to result in any sort of major boost for Orbán,” Bergmann says. “Instead, it sort of looks like a degree of desperation for Orbán.”
“I think by now, people know who they want to vote for,” Végh says. “Even for the undecided voters, foreign policy is not the top priority; cost of living is the top priority. J.D. Vance does nothing to cost of living issues, so the fact that he came is not going to sway undecided voters in any direction.”
But, she adds, Vance’s visit to Hungary is an attempt to keep Orbán’s base mobilized ahead of the election—and demonstrates the allyship between the MAGA movement and Orbán’s party.
While Orbán is seen as a model of the far-right movement, Végh says that, if his party loses the election, that may not have direct impacts on the rise in far-right politicians globally.
“In Europe particularly, the rise of far-right parties is driven by domestic dynamics,” she says. So, even if Orbán's party loses, “the French context, the Polish context, the Italian one is going to determine the overall success of the far-right parties in the given countries.”
At the same time, if Orbán's Fidesz loses, it would leave far-right parties with “a crucial takeaway,” Végh says: “The realization that even Viktor Orbán’s regime is not foolproof and it is possible to, after all, fall out of power in this hybrid state of a regime.”