How Viktor Orbán lost the election crushingly after 16 years in power. Two big mistakes of the prime minister, before and during the election campaign

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's party, Fidesz, initially ignored Péter Magyar, believing that enthusiasm for him would die down. In the campaign, Fidesz marched to the end on the threat of war, failing to convince voters, who were more concerned with the economy and corruption, analysts say.

Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday to the opposition Tisza group, led by former Prime Minister ally Péter Magyar, who won a comfortable majority to topple the current system.

For the prime minister's allies, an inspiration to “illiberal” conservatives around the world, for Russia or even for Donald Trump's MAGA world, Orbán's defeat could come as a shock.

A problem could be the clientelistic networks built by Orbán in Hungary, but also his conservative voters, convinced by his nationalist speech, by the Christian values ​​that he says he represents.

For Tisza voters, unhappy with economic stagnation, the rising cost of living, what they called Orbán's democratic slippages – as polls have shown – the departure of the current prime minister is a logical conclusion.

Hungarian analysts who spoke to HotNews agreed with this conclusion and noted not only the erosion of the prime minister's party, but also the major mistakes he made before and during the election campaign.

The economy, the one that mattered a lot

For almost 16 years, Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz, have ruled Hungary without fear of opposition, easily winning four seats and almost completely capturing the Hungarian state, according to analysts.

Orbán took over not only the key institutions, but also the universities, the public press and, through his allies, much of the private press, while altering the electoral system to favor the largest party – Fidesz.

For years, a liberal minority has tried unsuccessfully to oust Orbán, who thanks to economic growth has been able to please his voters. In recent years, things have deteriorated in every way.

The economy has stagnated, inflation has increased, new investments have stopped coming, EU-financed projects have stopped, and part of the European funds have been frozen by the EU until the key objectives regarding the rule of law are met, Gyorki Folk, journalist of the Hungarian publication HVG, explained to HotNews before the elections.

Other analysts agreed with the findings. “What led to Orbán's defeat was the cost of living, the lack of economic opportunities and the lack of jobs,” Mátyás Bódi, a sociologist affiliated with Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, told Politico

“A key message from Magyar was that the country is simply not working. And if you look at the health system, the transport system and the education system, for ordinary people the overall experience has been one of increasing degradation and dysfunction,” the sociologist said.

He notes that Magyar won over not only young voters but also middle-aged working-class men, an important segment of Fidesz's traditional electoral base.

All the while, opponents of the government accused corruption around the prime minister.

An analysis by the Financial Times has shown how Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's associates have earned huge sums from public funds, including EU funds, and their business success has been particularly felt since the current prime minister began his long reign in 2010.

Orbán's first mistake

It was Péter Magyar's appearance in the public eye after leaving Fidesz in 2024 that coalesced the opposition grand alliance.

With an apparent credibility provided by his former insider status, Magyar won over Orbán's critics, but also some of his former voters.

Aligning anti-Orbán voters behind Magyar was necessary, as the Hungarian electoral system rewards the big parties. The voters no longer wanted an environmentalist party, a left-wing party, they wanted to remove the prime minister first. And Tisza basically took the place of Fidesz.

But initially, Fidesz reacted clumsily.

“Fidesz's big long-term mistake was underestimating Tisza. When Péter Magyar entered the Hungarian political scene and after Tisza was established as a party, I think Fidesz thought that the huge enthusiasm around it would die down and that they would not pose a major threat in this election,” Andrea Virág, director of strategy at the Republikon Institute, a Budapest think-tank, told HotNews in an interview.

“And I think they realized a little too late that this is not the case and that Tisza is a huge danger to their power,” she added.

An uninspired campaign

Fidesz's mistakes continued in the election campaign. Renowned for its highly focused and highly professional campaigns, the ruling party has now failed dramatically in its efforts to convince voters.

Fidesz's strategy, analysts explained to HotNews, was based on an almost absolutely monothematic campaign – the threat of war in Ukraine, while voters were interested in domestic issues, the economy.

The key messages of this single-issue campaign were that Ukraine was a threat to Hungary's sovereignty and security, especially security of energy supply, and that there was collusion between the Hungarian opposition led by Péter Magyar, Kiev and Brussels, especially the EU institutions, to bring to power a Hungarian government supposedly favorable to Ukraine.

The country was littered with election posters depicting Magyars, Volodymyr Zelenski and Ursula von der Leyen as enemies of Hungary.

In a discussion with HotNews in the days leading up to the vote, Daniel Hegedüs, deputy director of the Institute for European Policy, noted that the Fidesz campaign is performing extremely poorly and that Hungarian voters are ultimately casting their vote based on domestic issues.

Andrea Virág also noticed that a big mistake of Fidesz was that they basically had no positive messages.

In 2022, Fidesz had won a big victory, also using the theme of war. This year, Orbán was stuck on one issue, while voters had other concerns and were no longer convinced.

Magyar's successful campaign

Instead, Magyar was in his element. Last year, he embarked on a long tour, on foot, from Budapest to Oradea. Numerous visits followed in larger or smaller cities, in villages with a few hundred inhabitants. He organized rallies in four or five towns a day, talked to the people, in the heart of Fidesz territory.

Virág explained that Magyar placed a very strong emphasis on local networks, the so-called “Tisza islands”.

Analysts who spoke to HotNews explained that Magyar's presence in all corners of the country was important and also sent an important message to voters.

While Fidesz marched undisturbed on the subject of war, Magyar sent strong and positive messages about the economy, the health system or the education system. He linked all these problems to Fidesz, accusing the “corrupt system” built by the prime minister's party.

The success of his messages was seen at the rallies. Observers noted a huge enthusiasm in these local organizations, party organizations, which greatly helped his campaign.

In the campaign, Fidesz stepped up its attacks on the opposition leader. If the liberal and leftist opposition was an easy target, Magyar, a conservative, proved much harder to kill. He ignored some attacks or debunked them, using his communication skills, including on social media.

Politico noted something else: Magyar has embraced the idea of ​​patriotism, using national flags at rallies, sometimes wearing traditional clothes and going to soccer matches like his rival.

Vance, Trump and European nationalists, very little relevant

Until the last moment, Orbán played the geopolitical card. In the campaign, the leaders of the nationalist right in Europe jumped to his aid.

Donald Trump has repeatedly sent messages of support. Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to Budapest first.

And in recent days, the Trump administration has sent in the heavy artillery in Vice President JD Vance, who has lashed out at the EU and announced his support for the prime minister. In vain.

A summit of “European patriots” held in Budapest shortly before the election “went almost unnoticed in Hungarian public discourse,” Hegedüs observed.

And all the commentators HotNews spoke to pointed out that Trump's endorsement matters little to voters, especially those determined to oust Orbán.

Lost battle with the press

One of Orbán's failings appears to have ultimately been, paradoxically, his very battle with the press.

During his years in power, the prime minister captured the public press and his allies bought most of the private media.

A critical radio station, Klubrádió, was left unlicensed, a critical website, Index, was acquired by businessmen close to the government, an old newspaper, Népszabadság, closed.

“95% of the press in Hungary is controlled or owned by the government,” said Mihály Hardy, editor of Klubrádió, in an interview with the HotNews audience.

But it was the media that dealt another blow to the Orbán Government.

An investigation by Telex, staffed by ex-Index journalists, revealed that the government was aware of serious safety violations at a Samsung factory in the city of Göd, but chose to cover them up in order not to scare off investors and suffer politically.

In the campaign, foreign media and Hungarian journalists exposed the close ties between Moscow and Budapest, which helped the Kremlin evade sanctions and passed details of EU meetings to Russia.

Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi was accused of carrying out espionage in coordination with another country.

The journalist had published extensive investigations detailing Russian influence operations in Hungary, as well as the relationship between Moscow and Hungary's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto.

It is unclear how much weight the details of Budapest-Moscow connections and the presence of Russian GRU agents in Hungary ultimately carried during the campaign. But the theme was visible in the enthusiastic chants of Magyar supporters before and after the election: “Russians, go home!”.