How Orbán lost the Hungarian election

For two years, the Hungarian leader watched his support slip away.

By MAX GRIERA
in Budapest

^{Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO}

Viktor Orbán likely knew what was coming.

When U.S. Vice President JD Vance stood beside him last week and predicted the Hungarian prime minister would win reelection Sunday, Orbán gave a small wave of his hand as if to say, “I’m not so sure.”

Ever since his challenger Péter Magyar burst onto the scene in early 2024, the Hungarian leader watched his support dwindle away, leaving him far behind in the polls as voters prepared to cast their ballots on April 12. Meanwhile, the opposition coalesced behind Magyar with a single aim: ousting Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party.

Here’s how the Hungarian prime minister lost his grip after 16 years in power.

Orbán lost the public’s trust

Orbán’s decline began in 2024, after the government pardoned the former deputy director of a children’s home who had been convicted of covering up child sexual abuse.

The resulting scandal prompted Magyar — then a mid-level civil servant and Fidesz member — to stage a public revolt against the prime minister, leading thousands of protesters into the streets. His media blitz included the release of an audio recording of his wife, Judit Varga, who had just been forced out as justice minister, describing alleged government interference in the case.

The accusations shattered Fidesz’s image as a protector of children. It caused “a moral crisis of a moralizing government,” said Péter Krekó, director at independent political consultancy Political Capital. “Since then, we can pretty much perceive that whatever the government does, whatever the government says, it resonates less with the public.”

Orbán lost the ground game

Magyar used the 2024 clemency scandal as a springboard for the European Parliament election that year. Following several protests, he launched a countrywide tour, visiting villages, towns and cities across Hungary to pierce the control Fidesz enjoys over much of the country’s media and won seven out of 21 seats in the European Parliament.

This year, after Magyar launched another tour, Orbán kicked off one of his own, his first series of public rallies after years of staging tightly controlled, closed-door events. Not only did he fail to mobilize as many people as Magyar, he was often confronted by protesters. 

In March, Orbán snapped at a booing crowd, accusing it of wanting “a Ukraine-friendly government” and seeking to give Hungarian money to Kyiv. 

The clip of the prime minister’s shouting went viral. That was the moment, “seeing hundreds of people booing him on the stage,” when Orbán likely first grasped that his support was far from universal, said Viktória Serdült, a veteran reporter at HVG who has covered Hungarian politics for more than two decades. “He couldn’t find the right way to handle this.”

Orbán lost on foreign policy

Orbán put foreign policy at the center of his campaign. He accused Kyiv of plotting to put Magyar in place as a puppet and of sabotaging the economy by cutting Hungary off from Russian oil. He claimed Magyar would send Hungarians to fight in Ukraine and slammed the EU for seeking to spend Hungarian tax dollars to support Kyiv.

Viktor Orbán and Péter Szijjártó greet supporters during campaign closing rally at Buda Castle, on the eve of the general election in Budapest on April 11, 2026. | Jakub Porzycki/Anadolu via Getty Images

That left him open to a flip in the narrative as reports surfaced of Russian interference in the campaign, alongside revelations that Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó had shared internal EU discussions with his Moscow counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

For Orbán, who began his political career demanding the departure of the Soviet army in 1989, the shift was a severe blow. The phrase “Russians go home” quickly spread as an anti-Orbán slogan.

Orbán lost on the economy

As the vote neared, the country’s economic malaise became a central issue in the election. For years, growth has stalled while inflation surged and real wages eroded. The cost-of-living crisis, combined with chronic underinvestment in education and health care, left many feeling the government under Orbán had stopped delivering.

“People see that it’s not a functioning government,” said Péter Márki-Zay, who led the campaign against the Hungarian prime minister in 2022. “That’s what changed.” 

“They hate Fidesz so much,” he added. “This was not the case four years ago.”

Orbán lost on social media

Orbán dominated traditional media channels, where Fidesz is estimated to control roughly 80 percent of the landscape, by installing loyalists in public media and enabling Fidesz-aligned business figures to acquire hundreds of regional and national outlets.

But he quickly found himself outpaced on social media.

Facebook is Hungary’s most popular social media platform, drawing around 4 million visits in February 2026 in a country of 9 million people. After Meta banned political advertising across its platforms, Fidesz — until then the biggest spender on political ads — found itself at a disadvantage as Magyar and his Tisza party cut through with viral videos and direct outreach to voters.

Orbán has 1.6 million followers to Magyar’s 930,000. And yet, in March, Magyar posted 287 times, generating more than 14 million interactions — nearly double Orbán’s 7.8 million from 342 posts, according to a Telex tally published April 3.

The government accused Facebook of throttling Fidesz-linked accounts, a claim the company denied.

Orbán lost the youth vote

Orbán’s biggest miscalculation may have been alienating young voters, with — among other things — a crackdown on Budapest’s nightlife.

Polls suggest young people turned against him en masse, with roughly two-thirds backing the opposition. “Thank you for bringing back hope, hope in change,” Magyar said in his victory speech, addressing the thousands of young people in front of him.

The night before the vote Orbán made a final appeal to young voters. He acknowledged the past years had been “unfair” to them and said he understood their desire to “rebel,” but urged them to direct their dissatisfaction against Brussels. He also promised to prevent Ukraine from dragging Hungarian youths into war and pledged tax cuts.

It was too late. Young people took to Budapest’s streets on Sunday night to celebrate his defeat.