The Stakes Have Never Been Higher in Hungary

Much of this article is derived from my interview of Anna Házas, a Hungarian student currently living in Austria. On Sunday morning, the 12th of April, she will take the 2-and-a-half hour train to Budapest, head to her polling station and cast her vote. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been at the head of her country since she was 8-years old. This article is for all the Hungarians, Anna above all, who dare to hope that these elections could be different, yet who know that the result of this election will leave half of the country’s population bitterly disappointed.

In less than a handful of days, Hungarians will return to the voting booths for the first time since the 3rd of April 2022. Since that day, the world has irrevocably altered. Orbán’s Hungary has for 16 years regressed deeper and deeper into its state of illiberal democracy: rejecting Brussels, demonising Ukraine, aligning with Russia and most recently, opening its arms wide to J.D. Vance on the 7th April. This bizarre move begs the question: why is the vice president of the United States visiting a country less than a week before its elections, just as its far-right government are finally teetering on the edge of an abyss? 

Vance’s answer to this question was excruciatingly clear. In his view, the EU is guilty of ‘one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that [he had] ever seen or ever even read about’ in these Hungarian elections. This article will demonstrate how utterly unfounded and how pathological these lies really are. It will reveal the true source of electoral fraud that is rotting Hungary from within: Fidesz.

This election has the potential to be monumental. But J.D. Vance was right about one thing… this is not a fair election. And at the rotten core of this unfairness is the man who stands to lose the most.

How has Orbán maintained an iron grip for 16 years?

Ironically enough, this man, prime minister of Hungary since 2010, commenced his political career as a promising young democrat. During his first political term as PM, Orbán was part of the project that helped prepare Hungary to join the EU in 2004. In 1989, he undertook a research fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford. George Soros, who funded this fellowship, would later be hounded out of Hungary by Orbán’s antisemitic smear campaign.

In his early years, Orbán was forward-thinking, energetic, full of hope for a new, democratic Hungary after it shed the shackles of communism in 1989. Now he leads an aggressively far-right, radical and ruthless party. Corruption is its defining feature: it syphons off taxpayer and EU money at a frankly laughable rate and volume. One fact perhaps illustrates this best: Mészáros Lőrinc is the country’s wealthiest man, wealthier even than Taylor Swift and Christiano Ronaldo. Lőrinc is also Orbán’s best friend. Coincidence?

For years now, Orbán has greased the cogs of his eternal clockwork of corruption. He is a mastermind of weaponising narratives, of fearmongering, of control through terror. He has followed a simple pattern: choose a target, and present it as an existential threat to Hungarian life, culture, the family-unit… anything goes. Fidesz is the comforting father figure that scares away the monsters from under the bed and in the wardrobe. 

In 2015, Orbán’s first victim was the immigration crisis. Then he villanised Soros and forced his renowned university out of Hungary. Next on the chopping block: gender. Fidesz passed legislation to ban the pride parade in May 2025, relying on the same fearmongering tactics. This was, however, a fatal error on Orban’s part. When Budapest’s mayor joined the protest, the largest ever, his arrest stood as a symbol of defiance. His eventual release was a symbol that the forces that bind us are stronger than those that endeavour to divide. No corner is safe from Orbán’s propaganda wheel. The Ukraine war, in Orbán’s narrative, is a Ukrainian attempt not only to appropriate Hungarian money, but to draw good, honest Hungarian boys onto the battlefields of Odessa. Orbán’s favourite playtoy is a scapegoat. Orbán provokes fear so as to represent stability and security.  

Shockingly, three states of emergency have been declared in Orbán’s tenure as prime minister. In flagrant violation of constitutionalism and rule of law, the ‘state of emergency’ allows Fidesz by decree, passing laws without the need for parliamentary approval. Hungary has become a practicing autocracy functioning within a quasi-democracy. But its illiberal democratic nature extends beyond its law-making procedures and ensnares itself right in the electoral process itself.

Is the Hungarian election system rigged?

Hungarians with a registered Hungarian address are able to cast two votes: one for their ‘preferred candidate in the single-member constituency their address belongs to’ and one for the ‘national party lists’. Those without a registered Hungarian address can vote for the national party lists only. Within the Hungarian parliament there are 199 seats in total. 106 of these seats are taken by representatives elected directly from one of the 106 constituencies for which they require only a simple majority to win the seat. What is most noteworthy is the practice of ‘winner’s compensation’. That is, when a single-member candidate gains a seat in a constituency and he/she belongs to a party (i.e. Fidesz), then automatically 20,000 votes are transferred to Fidesz in the ‘national list’ votes. The 2nd place candidate receives 15,000 votes transferred to the national list, 3rd place 10,000 and 4th place 5,000. However, a party needs a minimum threshold of 5% of the ballots cast in order to qualify to gain seats on the national list at all.

The system is convoluted and winner’s compensation allows for landslide victories. For example, in the last election round in 2022, Fidesz won a supermajority in parliament (which is a greater than 2/3 parliament constitutional majority). However, it only had a  52% electoral majority. In essence, as soon as there is a minor majority, the party rockets upwards.

No electoral system is perfect, else every nation would adopt the same one. But the Hungarian system successfully facilitated the rise and entrenchment of Fidesz into power.

The Propoganda Machine

Behind the scenes, Hungarian politics is a quagmire of propaganda, slander and shameless manipulation. There is a government monopoly on media advertisement. In the 2022 election, 84% of the billboards across Hungary were covered in pro-government propaganda. Orbán’s tight-fisted control on the media landscape and his network of oligarch-controlled, Fidesz-loyal institutions means that his finest arm is his spurious propaganda campaign.

Watching pro-Fidesz Facebook videos is a harrowing experience. Although META elected simply to put a blanket ban on all political campaign videos on Facebook and Instagram in October 2025, Orbán has found ways around this obstacle. As a result, outrageously provocative and emotionally manipulative videos have been shared. In one especially sickening AI video, a Hungarian man is visibly executed by firing squad while his Hungarian wife and child weep at home. ‘The safe choice’ is Fidesz, the message of the video reads.

The propaganda campaign is itself a shock to the system, but it is compounded by a far more sinister dimension of Fidesz’s election machinations. Reports have shown that in previous elections, Fidesz has used buses to transport voters from Ukraine into Hungary to vote for the party. Worse still, the threat of losing the custody of children is leveraged so as to pressure parents into voting in a particular way. This buying of votes, this coercion of people- it is election fraud, and it is a moral obscenity.  

Orbán’s antics have become predictable. The Hungarians are ready and want to vote. Even if they are not all hopeful.

Why is this election different? Is this election different?

For years, the electoral landscape and political prospect has looked bleak in Hungary. However, of late, there has been much talk of change and much talk of hope. What has made this difference? Three main arguments can be made for the case of potential change. Firstly, the state of economic deterioration that Hungary finds itself in. Secondly, a particularly nasty pedophilia scandal that rocked the Fidesz party. And finally, the promise of a new candidate: Péter Magyar, the Hungarian. 

As it stands in Hungary, economic suffering and endemic corruption have become entirely normalised. The fact that the government syphons off taxpayer money is an accepted fact. Indeed, one of the arguments being run in support of Fidesz is that the current regime are so corrupt and have hitherto extracted so much money, that they are already satiated. A new party in power would mean financial corruption afresh. 

The country is running a huge budget deficit which is being funded by further debt. The ‘Orbánomics’ agenda saw the introduction of a flat rate income tax as well as the constant rejection of Foreign Direct Investment. These measures have left Hungarians poorer than ever. The economy is on its knees. Even the attempt to boost the population numbers by incentivising working mothers to have more children with a tax exemption on personal income tax has crippled the economy. Indeed, the whole system that Orbán has created through his party is beginning to crumble.

The catalyst for this crumbling can be traced back directly to the 2023 pedophilia scandal. Outrage ensued when Fidesz’s Katalin Novák, then president, issued a presidential pardon to a man who had helped to cover up the crimes of a convicted pedophile in an orphanage. The scandal was explosive. Novák and Judit Varga, former justice minister, both resigned in the sillage of the scandal. In one fell swoop, both women representatives in the cabinet were knocked out. 

Out of the rubble of this fallout emerged perhaps the most important force of change in this upcoming election. Former Fidesz insider Peter Magyar is now in opposition and a vehement counterforce to the regime.

Who is Péter Magyar?

For many Hungarians, Magyar is the dark horse rising from the shadows. Magyar rose to fame when he gave an interview in which he railed against Orbán’s regime to Partizán, a YouTube channel uncovering the inner workings of Fidesz. YouTube was the only platform he could use: Hungarian television is state controlled. This man whose surname ‘Magyar’ literally means ‘Hungarian’ quickly became a symbol of hope.

In a country where Orbán represents fear, Magyar represents something different. He frames himself as a man of the people, he represents unity. Magyar is known for walking with the people at protests and when campaigning. His campaign is grassroots at its core. Magyar is undeniably a populist. Is this bad? Anna Házas asks: ‘Do you fight populism with populism? Is populism the answer?’ Maybe the only way to get rid of Orbán is to play him at his own game.

What has been so remarkably successful about Magyar’s campaign is his use of local support and organisation. Instead of ruling from above in a patriarchal hierarchy like Orbán prefers, Magyar has gone bottom-up. Within Tisza, Magyar’s party, thousands of tiny local organisations called Tisza islands have sprung up. They are what Anna calls ‘islands in a sea of apathy and propaganda and fear’. Thousands of volunteers man tiny Tisza stands at markets. The volunteers are from all ages, open, kind, and willing to talk. They stand in clear opposition to Orbán’s fear-based campaign that he has led for the past 16 years.

Magyar sows not division, but cohesion. When Orbán offended the ethnic Hungarian minorities in Transylvania by offering his support for the Romanian Nationalist George Simion, Magyar walked from Budapest to Transylvania to honour the Hungarian minority there. On his route, people walked with him for kilometers, brought him food and water, and came to speak to him. Yes, Magyar’s method is blatantly populist in its approach, and strategically channelled into an aggressive political campaign. But the sad truth is, otherwise, he stands no chance. Otherwise he will lose.

Perhaps, for the first time in 16 long years, the emperor is feeling vulnerable. Perhaps, for the first time in 16 years, the emperor is wearing no clothes and is exposed as he truly is, for all to see.

A glimmer of hope?

On the anti-government protest on the 15th March, Anna wore her  Hungarian Rosette for the first time since her childhood. She inherited it from her grandma, a fierce critic of Orbán, who passed away in 2024. She attended protests regularly even at the age of 80, owning a pair of ‘protesting shoes’ which allowed her to stand for longer. In memory of her grandma, and in support of her country, Anna told me that she wants to be proud to be Hungarian again. Wearing the rosette symbolises hope. It symbolises national pride separate from the structure that Orbán and his party have created. For years, Orbán and Fidesz had hijacked all national symbols, equating them exclusively with their far-right politics. This is what makes the fact that Hungarians are beginning to wear rosettes again all the more uplifting.

No matter what happens on Sunday, it is the responsibility of both of the  two potential leaders, be it Orbán or Magyar, to respond to this yearning for unity, to channel it, and to be the bigger person, displaying respect to one another, and putting the cohesion of their country above personal pride. Something bigger than this election is at stake – Hungarian belief in the credibility of its own political system.

I would like to end this article with some final words of Anna during our interview. She told me, with great sadness, how hard it has been to be Hungarian these past years: ‘it’s tiring, to always be apologising. I am always apologising for being Hungarian.’

I then asked her what future she saw for her country. She responded as follows: ‘The entire Hungarian society needs to learn how to do democracy. My grandfather always used to say that that in the 90s it was so exciting and there was so much hope. But then Orbán came in and put a stop to it. The learning process was never complete. Hungarians never learnt how to do democracy.’

Maybe the elections on Sunday will be able to change this. Maybe, it is young Hungarians like Anna who are needed to heal Hungary’s relationship with democracy and to begin the learning journey anew.