Hungary is only a small country, but its election on Sunday will be one of the most closely watched this year. Far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, in office since 2010, is seeking a fifth consecutive term of office, but the opinion polls have consistently shown him trailing badly. A win for the opposition would be a much-needed boost for the forces of democracy in central Europe and beyond.
At the last election, in 2022, Orbán was also seen to be in some trouble but he surprised observers with a landslide victory. The opposition, then running as a coalition called “United for Hungary”, badly underperformed their polls, winning only 34.4% of the vote as against 54.1% for Orbán’s party, Fidesz. The electoral system magnified that difference, giving Fidesz 135 of the 199 seats to the opposition’s 57. The only other party to reach the 5% threshold was the further-right Our Homeland, with 5.9% and six seats.*
The opposition went away to lick its wounds, and Orbán became even more forthright in his dissent from the European mainstream, obstructing aid to Ukraine and helping to organise a new far-right group, Patriots for Europe, in the European parliament. His position was somewhat weakened in 2023 when Poland’s far-right government, which had been a reliable ally, was defeated, but that was balanced by the advent of sympathetic governments in Slovakia and Czechia.
The big shift, however, came in early 2024 with the resignation of former Fidesz insider Péter Magyar, who went on to become leader of a previously dormant centre to centre-right opposition party, Tisza. Following a strong performance in that year’s European elections, Tisza came to be seen as the main challenger to Orbán’s supremacy. Since the middle of last year it has consistently held a lead of about ten points in the opinion polls, very much supplanting the traditional opposition.
That’s not as impressive as it sounds, firstly because the polls overstated the opposition’s support last time, and secondly because the system is biased in Fidesz’s favor. In addition to 93 seats chosen by nationwide (D’Hondt) proportional representation there are 106 constituency seats elected by first-past-the-post, with boundaries drawn to help the government. But if a ten-point lead holds up that won’t matter, unless Orbán is willing to resort to outright ballot-stuffing.
As opinion polarises around the single question of Orbán’s survival, it’s possible that no-one else will reach the 5% mark. In contention at around that level are Our Homeland, Democratic Coalition (the last remnant of the old centre-left opposition) and the Two-Tailed Dog Party, a satirical party that managed 3.3% last time.
Hungary is important well beyond its borders because over the last decade or so Orbán, more than any other far-right leader except perhaps Donald Trump, has become a role model for a certain sort of politician: those who still aim to be treated as part of the mainstream while pursuing a fundamentally authoritarian agenda. Australia’s Tony Abbott is a good representative of the class, maintaining a self-image as a pro-western democrat while systematically corrupting the institutions that protect us against dictatorship.
Orbán’s own description of his system as “illiberal democracy” exposes the fraud. Whether it’s possible to sustain democracy without liberalism is a matter for academic debate, but even if it is, Hungary isn’t it. The reality, both for Orbán and his imitators, is that every move away from liberalism has also undermined democracy.
Yet far too few of those politicians have been called to account for their treachery. Only now, when a desperate Orbán is calling in some favors – American vice-president J.D. Vance is the latest to openly campaign for him – is some attention being paid to the curious spectacle of the self-styled defenders of “western civilisation” backing an autocrat and Putinist. If Orbán does go down, the actual friends of democracy will all breathe a little easier.
.
* The final seat went to the party representing the German ethnic minority, which is exempt from the threshold. There are actually three far-right parties: Fidesz, which was once a mainstream centre-right party but is now a vehicle for Orbán’s authoritarianism; Jobbik, which has moved towards the centre and was part of the United for Hungary coalition; and Our Homeland, which split from Jobbik and is more explicit in its racism and antisemitism (unlike Fidesz it is strongly anti-Israel). Also note that 18 of Fidesz’s seats are held by its tame coalition partner, the Christian Democrats.
The World is Not Enough 