Hungary’s election battle centers on the country’s future

In a region where almost every election is billed as a defining post-1989 moment, Hungary’s parliamentary vote appears to stand apart.

That phrase — the “most important election since ’89” — is often overused in Central and Eastern Europe, only to be recycled at the next trip to the ballot box.

But Hungary’s vote tomorrow makes a strong case for the title.

The outcome could shape not only the country’s political course, but also its standing inside the European Union.

Tisza leader Péter Magyar, a 44-year-old lawyer and former Fidesz insider, has built his campaign around a promise to anchor Hungary firmly in the West and to purge what he describes as corruption from public institutions.

He has vowed to repair relations with the European Union and secure the release of some €18bn in cohesion and recovery funds frozen because of the Fidesz government’s failure to comply with rule-of-law standards.

Mr Orbán’s party has governed since 2010 and has won four parliamentary elections in that period, each with a two-thirds majority.

That dominant majority allowed Fidesz to swiftly rewrite Hungary’s constitution in 2011, curbing the independence of the judiciary and state media.

By most estimates, companies aligned with Fidesz now control roughly 80% of private media outlets as well.

Locked in repeated disputes with Brussels over migrant quotas and the bloc’s rule-of-law norms, Fidesz has turned Hungary into something of an outlier inside the EU, even as it retains significant leverage through veto powers at Council level.

Those tensions have deepened further since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with the Orbán government choosing to preserve political and economic ties with Moscow and blocking EU funding for Ukraine at key moments for Kyiv.

Viktor Orbán’s party has held power since 2010

Mr Orbán has cast himself and his government as neutral interlocutors in the war in Ukraine.

Yet over the past two years, that posture has become harder to sustain as anything other than pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian.

Hungary’s prime minister has met Russian President Vladimir Putin three times since 2023, while travelling to Kyiv only once to see Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

His foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, has made at least 15 visits to Russia since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion to oversee energy agreements between the two countries.

A leaked phone call published two weeks ago by a Hungarian media outlet offered a glimpse of the unusually warm Fidesz-Kremlin relationship. The call, recorded in August 2024, was between Mr Szijjártó and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

During the conversation, Mr Lavrov asks Mr Szijjártó to seek the removal of a Russian oligarch’s sister from an EU sanctions list, and Hungary’s top diplomat replies that he will do his best.

Now Mr Orbán’s self-declared system of “illiberal democracy” faces its most serious electoral test in 16 years, with Tisza emerging as the challenger.

In just two years, Mr Magyar has taken the party from near-anonymity to a national movement that could unseat Fidesz at the ballot box.

An aggregate poll from Politico places Tisza 10 percentage points ahead of the ruling party.

One Hungarian pollster, Median, estimated yesterday that Tisza could win 138 of parliament’s 199 seats — a super-majority that would give it broad scope to reverse many of Fidesz’s constitutional changes.

However, Hungary’s electoral map — redrawn under reforms introduced by Fidesz in 2011 — means that a narrower Tisza win might still fall short of delivering a governing majority.

In that scenario, it is not impossible that Fidesz would seek to assemble a coalition with the far-right, Eurosceptic Mi Hazánk party, which is polling at around 5%.

Under Mr Magyar, Tisza has achieved what opposition parties in Hungary failed to do in the last four elections: expand beyond the big cities and into the wider country.

He has managed to attract support from both conservative and centre-left voters.

“There is not a big ideological proximity for former Fidesz voters to vote for Tisza. It’s also a right-wing party,” Daniel Mickecz, a Hungarian political scientist told RTÉ News.

Both parties, he said, share similar positions on migration and ideology.

“The Tisza party is also seen by liberal or left-wing voters as an instrument to change the government. So, they actually have high hopes in Peter Magyar and see the party as something like an effective tool to win an election,” said Mr Mickecz from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

At this stage of the race, the momentum appears to be with Tisza.

Tisza supporters gather at a rally in Aszód, outside Budapest

The party has staged rallies in towns and cities across Hungary.

Yesterday, RTÉ News attended one of them in Aszód, a small commuter town about an hour east of Budapest by car.

About 40 local volunteers, dressed in Tisza-branded jackets, set up the stage and handed fliers to hundreds of residents who came to hear Mr Magyar and the party’s local candidate.

The mood was upbeat. When Mr Magyar arrived, the reception resembled that of a pop star, with locals pressing forward to shake his hand and snap selfies.

By waving the Hungarian flag as he enters each rally, Mr Magyar has tapped into a strain of patriotism that resonates with many older voters, while pairing it with a message of change aimed at younger Hungarians.

“The most important question in this election is whether Hungary will remain free and part of the European Union,” Mr Magyar told the crowd.

“We cannot be a puppet or colony of Russia,” he said, prompting a spontaneous chant of “Russians go home”.

Drawing on Hungary’s recent past, he reminded supporters that this year marks the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising against Soviet forces.

“We have a chance again to make Hungary a sovereign, European and human country,”Mr Magyar said.

The line landed strongly, drawing another burst of applause.

Like many opposition parties seeking power, Tisza is making a broad set of promises, including a new tax on the super-rich, insulation subsidies for households and increased family support payments.

Among those in the crowd was 24-year-old Anna Kalman, who had travelled home from the Netherlands to vote.

“I’m just genuinely very excited and this is genuinely my opportunity to have a future here,” she said.

Another 24-year-old, IT student Máté Csizmada, said it felt like “our problems and voices are actually heard”.

The gathering in Aszód was only one of seven campaign rallies Mr Magyar addressed yesterday.

Fidesz, by contrast, is avoiding comparable events in small towns, wary that Tisza supporters could turn up and heckle candidates with chants of “Russians go home”.

The ruling party has made the war in Ukraine central to its campaign, covering election posters with images of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

One poster shows both Mr Zelensky and Mr Magyar under the slogan: “They are dangerous! Let’s stop them.”

Fidesz argues that a Tisza-led government could pull Hungary into the war in Ukraine.

Péter Magyar has campaigned on keeping Hungary’s interests within the West

Mr Magyar has said a Tisza government would maintain Hungary’s policy of not sending arms or military aid to Ukraine, while also condemning Russia as the aggressor in its full-scale invasion.

Attack posters aimed at prominent figures are a familiar and well-worn Fidesz campaign tactic.

But Tisza’s strong polling suggests the approach is proving less effective with voters this time.

“Fidesz’s main strategy is to polarize the electorate so they want to be actually on the side of the majority.

“People care more about domestic issues like the cost of living, the healthcare system, the education system, public transportation,” said Mr Mikecz, the political scientist from Eötvös Loránd University.

“This kind of strategy to polarise the electorate with the help of such an issue [the war in Ukraine], didn’t work as much as Fidesz hoped”.

A defeat for Mr Orbán would be felt keenly in both the Trump administration and the Kremlin.

Mr Orbán is among the few European leaders able to pick up the phone and speak directly with the leaders of both the United States and Russia.

US Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest earlier this week to back Mr Orbán, a leader admired by the MAGA movement in the US and seen as sharing much of its political outlook.

Whether that visit has shifted voting intentions remains unclear.

Tonight, Fidesz will stage a large rally in Budapest’s Castle district in a final push to energise its core supporters. If it can mobilise enough of those voters in rural constituencies on election day, the contest may be closer than polls indicate.

Mr Magyar closed his rally in Aszód by reciting lines from a 19th century Hungarian revolutionary poem.

The crowd joined in unprompted before an old Hungarian folk song began to play.

Mr Magyar has tapped into frustration over a stagnant economy and poor ties with the EU, blending it with patriotism and a note of nostalgia.

Tomorrow will show whether that vision of Hungary’s future is the one most voters embrace — or whether Mr Orbán’s message still holds.