Elections, explained.
People cast their votes in the parliamentary elections in Hungary, in Budapest, Hungary (Marek Antoni Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Undoing what Orbán built will take something more than careful campaigning.
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Hungary shows illiberal regimes can be beaten – the harder question is whether they can be dismantledHungary shows illiberal regimes can be beaten – the harder question is whether they can be dismantled
Viktor Orbán built a system designed to win, and for 16 years it did. That it could be beaten at all is what makes Hungary’s election result matter far beyond Budapest. For opposition movements operating under illiberal incumbents elsewhere, the outcome offers a set of lessons about what it actually takes to win against consolidated illiberal regimes, and potentially reverse democratic erosion. These are message discipline, contesting the full electoral map, and opposition unity.
As the longest-serving leader in post-communist Europe, Orbán and his political party, Fidesz, rewrote the constitution to entrench his power, consolidated control over courts, universities, and civil society, and came to dominate the media landscape. Elections still took place, but they were fundamentally unfair, and by the time Hungarians went to the polls on 12 April, Orbán’s model of competitive authoritarianism had become a reference point for illiberal movements across the world.
And yet, Péter Magyar, the presumptive next prime minister, nonetheless triumphed against a tilted electoral system. Magyar’s Tisza Party won 138 of parliament’s 199 seats on 53.6% of the vote, while Orbán’s Fidesz was reduced to 55 seats.
Hungary becomes something genuinely new, the first test case of whether democratic erosion is structurally reversible, not merely temporarily interrupted.
Magyar did not attempt to outflank Orbán on identity, culture war, or foreign policy. Instead, Tisza forced the campaign onto terrain the government could not escape: everyday governance. The focus fell relentlessly on cross-ideological concerns, such as deteriorating hospitals, crumbling schools, stagnant wages, and persistent inflation. This mattered because illiberal regimes depend on shaping the political battlefield around grievance, identity, and external threat. Centring material conditions denied Orbán that advantage and forced him to defend his record directly.
This was a careful choice. Orbán had ridden to power on resentment over the economic failures of Hungary’s centre-left governments, and his implicit promise was that he would deliver where they had not. For most Hungarians, he did not. Independent journalists reinforced this accountability by sustaining investigative pressure on corruption and state failure, ensuring these issues remained salient rather than episodic.
Orbán’s response followed the familiar formula. He sought to redirect blame outward, towards the European Union and Ukraine, framing Hungary’s problems as externally imposed. After 16 years in power, the distance between that narrative and lived reality had become too wide. Voters were no longer willing to accept deflection in place of delivery. Populist governments across Europe have regularly failed to meet the economic expectations they generate on the way to power. That gap between promise and delivery is a consistent vulnerability for incumbents.
Magyar did not concede rural territory. He campaigned aggressively in towns and villages long regarded as Fidesz heartland, areas previous opposition candidates had largely written off. This expanded the electoral battleground and proved that no constituency was structurally beyond contestation. These communities were not immune to the economic pressures facing the rest of the country. By showing up with a message rooted in material concerns, Magyar converted latent dissatisfaction into political movement, and Orbán’s rural support proved more brittle than it appeared once it was actively tested.
Previous Fidesz victories were enabled by a fragmented opposition. This time, Magyar’s momentum persuaded other opposition parties to stand aside and consolidate support behind a single challenger. Factionalism was suspended in favour of electoral viability. In systems engineered to reward incumbents, internal division is often the opposition’s greatest liability, and Hungary demonstrated the power of removing it.
Budapest, Hungary (Akos Stiller/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
One factor cutting across all three lessons may raise questions around the likelihood of finding an exact Magyar equivalent in other countries, however. Magyar was not an outsider. He had in fact been a Fidesz apparatchik before becoming its most effective critic, and that biography gave him a credibility no conventional opposition candidate could replicate. He could attack the system from within its own frame of reference, and he was immune to the standard counter-narrative that opposition movements represent foreign-backed threats to national sovereignty. How transferable the Hungarian template is to competitive authoritarian systems where no such insider challenger exists remains an open question.
Magyar’s victory is also worth qualifying on its own terms. While he may have run to the left of Orbán’s himself, he ran to the right of Hungary’s previous opposition coalitions and maintained a number of socially conservative positions. His platform was explicitly anti-corruption and pro-European rather than socially progressive. The lesson here, if uncomfortable, is that defeating illiberal incumbents may require challengers willing to contest rather than abandon the cultural terrain those incumbents have shaped.
Beyond Magyar’s electoral success itself, the deeper caution is about what comes after. Winning an election is not the same as dismantling a system. Orbán’s networks across institutions, business, and media will not dissolve with a single electoral loss.
Magyar’s supermajority is not simply a larger parliamentary majority. It is the constitutional threshold required to amend the foundational law Orbán constructed. No opposition movement in a comparable competitive authoritarian system has previously combined electoral victory with the formal mandate to rewrite the constitutional architecture of the regime it defeated. If Magyar uses that majority to reverse the institutional consolidation at the foundational level, Hungary becomes something genuinely new, the first test case of whether democratic erosion is structurally reversible, not merely temporarily interrupted.
That question matters far beyond Budapest. Orbán’s model was exported. The answer to whether it can be constitutionally dismantled can offer both hope and potential lessons to opposition forces looking to mirror Magyar’s electoral success and push back against the tide of competitive authoritarianism.
About the author
James Paterson
Dr James Paterson is the Research Associate for the Transnational Challenges Program at the Lowy Institute.
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