\tHungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n (right) and US Vice President JD Vance shake hands after a joint press conference in Budapest, Hungary, April 7, 2026. | Attila Kisbenedek\/AFP via Getty Images\t<\/p>\n
Under normal circumstances, an election in Hungary \u2014 a landlocked Central European country of less than 10 million \u2014 would not be a major world event. But for the past 16 years, Hungary has not been a normal country.<\/p>\n
After Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n won a massive victory in Hungary\u2019s 2010 election, he almost immediately began changing the country\u2019s system of government to ensure he would never lose again. He has rigged the electoral rules to favor his Fidesz party, consolidated control over 80 percent to 90 percent of the country\u2019s media, and packed the courts with yes-men. By the mid-2010s, Hungarian elections were so thoroughly tilted in his favor that it became extraordinarily difficult for the opposition to win.<\/p>\n
But this time around, they might just hit the jackpot.<\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n\u2019s opponents have united around a new party, Tisza, led by a charismatic defector from his regime named P\u00e9ter Magyar. His message, focused on the regime\u2019s catastrophic economic record and extreme corruption, has resonated with many Hungarians; his deft use of social media and in-person campaigning has helped him escape a severe cash disadvantage and the government\u2019s hammerlock on the media.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Polls show Tisza leading Fidesz by a considerable margin; there is a very serious chance that Magyar will be Hungary\u2019s next prime minister, though he will need a supermajority in parliament to undo some of the most damaging changes Orb\u00e1n has made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stakes are enormous: not just for Hungarians, but for the United States and even the world.<\/p>\n
Under Orb\u00e1n\u2019s far-right rule, Hungary has been Trump\u2019s most reliable ally in Europe. But for many in the broader MAGA movement, it is more than that: it is a blueprint for the American future, the rough equivalent of what Nordic countries represent to Bernie Sanders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Were Orb\u00e1n to truly fall, their dreams might be shattered \u2014 which is why Vice President JD Vance visited Hungary this week to all-but-openly campaign for Orb\u00e1n\u2019s reelection. On Tuesday, he gave a speech at a Fidesz campaign rally, calling President Donald Trump on the phone from the stage to get his thoughts on Hungary. \u201cGo to the polls in the weekend, stand with Viktor Orb\u00e1n, because he stands for you,\u201d Vance said in closing.<\/p>\n
The Hungarian prime minister is also a close Russian ally, recently describing himself as a \u201cmouse\u201d helping the \u201clion\u201d Putin. Hungary\u2019s membership in the European Union and NATO has allowed Orb\u00e1n to disrupt the West\u2019s pro-Ukraine efforts from within, including by blocking aid. Were Orb\u00e1n to be ousted, it would be a considerable boon to the Ukrainian war effort \u2014\u00a0and a significant blow to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s 2026 election, in short, is not just like any other vote. It is one of the most significant elections of the entire year, and perhaps even the decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How Orb\u00e1n could actually lose<\/p>\n
Under Orb\u00e1n, Hungary has become a paradigmatic example of a very modern kind of autocracy: one political scientists call \u201ccompetitive authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n
In such a system, voters are (mostly) free to cast ballots for the candidate of their choosing: Hungary isn\u2019t like Russia under Putin. But Hungarian elections are decidedly unfair, in that the system is structured to give the incumbent government so many advantages that the opposition should be almost incapable of winning. It is a system based around plausible deniability: retaining just enough democratic features that Hungary can claim to still be a democracy, while doing its best to give the voters as little meaningful choice as possible.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s advantage begins with the very structure of elections. Hungarian parliamentary elections operate under mixed electoral rules: A little over half of all parliamentarians are elected in US-style single district contests, while the remainder are determined by national proportional votes.<\/p>\n
The single districts are gerrymandered beyond all recognition to overweight Fidesz\u2019s rural base and steal seats from the opposition\u2019s heavily urban constituency. Moreover, Orb\u00e1n put in place rules that allow his party to transfer over excess votes from gerrymandered districts they win to the proportional contest \u2014\u00a0effectively allowing them to run up the score in an already-rigged game.<\/p>\n
But even beyond the formal rules, the background conditions of elections are profoundly unfair. There are a million different ways this is true \u2014\u00a0ranging from the government\u2019s hammerlock over media to an unfair campaign finance system to a two-tiered voting system for Hungarians abroad that favors government supporters over critics. There are widespread allegations of voter intimidation, like local officials threatening to cut off a poor constituent\u2019s access to health care unless they vote for Fidesz.<\/p>\n
Kim Lane Scheppele, an expert on Hungarian electoral law at Princeton University, estimates that the opposition would need to win by roughly 10 to 15 points in the national vote to overcome the structural advantages the government has given itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And currently, Magyar and Tisza are 10 points ahead in Politico EU\u2019s poll of polls.<\/p>\n
This is a remarkable accomplishment: a testament to both Magyar\u2019s skills as a politician and to the serial failures of the Fidesz government.<\/p>\n
Magyar used to be a high-ranking member of Fidesz: His ex-wife was Orb\u00e1n\u2019s justice minister. In 2024, he resigned in protest of a child sexual abuse scandal and began attacking the regime as a corrupt \u201cfeudalistic\u201d oligarchy. This is largely true: The Orb\u00e1n system depends on abusing regulatory and fiscal powers to funnel money into a handful of friendly oligarchs, who depend on government largesse and favor to maintain their wealth.<\/p>\n
This has made the prime minister and his friends very wealthy men, but also done real damage to Hungary\u2019s economy: the country is currently one of the poorest in the European Union, if not the poorest. As the Fidesz-aligned rich get richer, the quality of public services degrades. Hungary is experiencing population decline thanks to its low birth rate and unusually high levels of outmigration.<\/p>\n
These are things ordinary Hungarians can see and feel in their everyday lives. As a socially conservative former regime insider, Magyar is a credible messenger for former Fidesz supporters disenchanted by Orb\u00e1n\u2019s serial failures. He has criss-crossed the country, using in-person events to overcome the government\u2019s financial advantage and control over information, and become a fixture in the handful of independent media outlets that remain.<\/p>\n
This perfect storm is what it takes to give the opposition even a chance to overcome the structural advantages Fidesz has put in place to remain in power. Even then, there is a real chance Orb\u00e1n tries to cheat: declaring the election null due to alleged fraud, \u00e0 la Trump in 2020, or installing himself in the country\u2019s presidency (and expanding its powers) rather than leaving.<\/p>\n
Whether he could pull this off is a different question. And right now, observers are bullish on Tisza\u2019s chances: betting markets put Magyar\u2019s odds of becoming prime minister at 66 percent.<\/p>\n
What Orb\u00e1nism\u2019s defeat would mean for the global authoritarian right\u00a0<\/p>\n
If Magyar does win, restoring democracy will not be easy. Much of the architecture of Orb\u00e1nism is enshrined in the Hungarian constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote in parliament to amend. A full Tisza victory, then, requires more than merely winning a rigged game \u2014\u00a0it requires doing so resoundingly.<\/p>\n
But even if domestic reform proves hard, Sunday\u2019s results will matter to millions beyond Hungary\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
Under Orb\u00e1n, Hungary has become more than just a symbol of the far-right\u2019s rising political fortunes: It has become an active player in extending its global reach and an intellectual leader in shaping its agenda. Budapest has spent an enormous amount of money and political effort helping support sister parties across the democratic world. There is a reason why far-right leaders like France\u2019s Marine Le Pen, Argentina\u2019s Javier Milei, and Israel\u2019s Benjamin Netanyahu have all visited Budapest to campaign with Orb\u00e1n during the late stages of the 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n
The greatest success, however, has been the Hungarian capture of the American right\u2019s imagination. Beginning around the late 2010s, Trump-aligned intellectuals and political operatives began citing Hungary as a model for what the right should aim to do in the United States. They describe it not as an impoverished authoritarian outpost, but a conservative Christian democracy that took the difficult-but-necessary steps to destroy the pathological influence of cultural leftism on a society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Adherents to this view can be found throughout the Trump administration, with Vance himself perhaps the most prominent. In a 2024 interview with Rod Dreher, an American conservative writer who decamped to Budapest to take a job at a government-backed think tank, the future vice president praised Orb\u00e1n\u2019s crackdown on academic freedom \u2014\u00a0which included forcing an entire university out of the country \u2014 as an example for the American right.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s approach in Hungary,\u201d Vance said. \u201cI think his way has to be the model for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Top conservative intellectuals share a similar view: Dreher is not the only one who moved to Hungary to work with a government-aligned outfit. Were Hungary\u2019s regime to well and truly fall, it would represent a significant ideological defeat for this movement, one that would raise questions about its political durability in Europe, America, and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A defeat for Orb\u00e1n is a defeat for Putin<\/p>\n
The contest in Hungary also has huge stakes for the still-brutal war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Since the 2022 Russian invasion, Orb\u00e1n has emerged as the country\u2019s greatest opponent in the Western alliance. He has repeatedly blocked European and NATO support for Ukraine \u2014 he is currently holding up a roughly $100 million EU loan to the country \u2014\u00a0and has stoked conflict with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Atlantic\u2019s Anne Applebaum recently reported that some European leaders no longer talk about the war in front of Orb\u00e1n, as there is an expectation that anything said will get back to Putin.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t coming out of nowhere: there is longstanding suspicion of Ukraine in Hungary, owing largely to the treatment of the Hungarian ethnic minority in that country. Orb\u00e1n\u2019s central reelection argument has been that Magyar would be a pro-Ukraine puppet; he has repurposed against Zelenskyy the same conspiratorial attack lines, at times word-for-word, he once used against Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros (both men are Jewish).<\/p>\n
Perhaps for this reason, the nationalistic Magyar has been cool toward Zelenskyy and Ukraine during the campaign \u2014\u00a0adopting a more adversarial stance than any other center-right party in Europe. But at the same time, he has no love for the Kremlin, which is currently busy trying to get Orb\u00e1n reelected. So while Hungary under Magyar may not be a pro-Ukrainian nation, it will certainly be far more anti-Russian than it is under Orb\u00e1n.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A Magyar victory \u2014 even a simple majority \u2014 would at very least mean that Russia loses its mole in Europe. At most, it could lead to Ukraine receiving significantly greater amounts of European support.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can thus say this for Viktor Orb\u00e1n: He has made Hungary into an outsize player on the global stage, though far more for ill than for good. His fall would have shockwaves in Brussels, Washington, and Moscow \u2014 weakening the financial foundations of the European far-right, the ideological foundations of the MAGA movement, and the political foundations of Putin\u2019s effort to split Europe from Ukraine.<\/p>\n
But if Orb\u00e1n wins, none of this will come to pass. And the fate of Hungarian democracy could be sealed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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