Watershed Elections in Hungary? – What’s at Stake?

This article was first published by the Review of Democracy by Bálint Mikola, a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at CEU

For the past 16 years, Hungary has increasingly come to be seen as the epitome of swift and steady democratic decline ending in a clear path toward autocratization. However, the ruling Fidesz party anticipates the 2026 general elections with a challenger that looks more credible and more popular than the ones it defeated during the past four elections, which opens the possibility for democratic recovery. Still, questions abound regarding the peaceful transition of power, the legal possibilities for rebuilding the rule of law and restoring media freedom, the reintegration of the country into the EU, as well as the malleability of popular attitudes that made the 16-year rule of Fidesz possible in the first place.

A Turbulent Campaign With Teeth That Didn’t Bite

The election campaign that precedes the popular vote on April 12 may only be described in superlatives for being the most aggressive, simplistic, and dehumanizing campaign the country has seen with frequent episodes of blackmailing, breaches of privacy, interventions from domestic and foreign intelligence services, and the extended use of disinformation via artificial intelligence and human trolls.

Since the eruption of Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party on the political landscape and its consistent lead in public opinion polls since early 2025, Fidesz needed to adapt its previous campaign strategy and experiment with new tools. Changes in the technological and regulatory environment, such as the large-scale availability and low production costs of deepfake videos, as well as the implementation of the EU’s Political Advertising Regulation which made Meta and Google platforms phase out political ads from their platforms forced the governing party to adapt its social media strategy which had previously relied on a combination of paid advertising and centralized content outsourced to political influencers managed by the party. Since this became unviable, and Fidesz has drastically lost its public support among voters below 40, the party has tried to compensate its losses by setting up alternative means of social media presence through organizing a party fan club dubbed “Fight Club” and trying to replicate the earlier success of its Civic Circles via “Digital Civic Circles”. After the failure of both became obvious (due to reaching only older demographics and generating meager engagement), the party switched back to classic campaign rallies held in stadiums, but

“it could not catch up with the energy and spontaneity that Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party radiated through their organic social media content and pop-up campaign events in town squares across the country.”

In the last two months of the campaign, Fidesz mobilized PM Viktor Orbán who tried to catch up to the sprint by announcing a series of conventional campaign rallies in major towns, but both its simplistic campaign messages (Tisza Party is an agent of Ukraine, therefore voting for them means war, and ultimately, death) and an exhausted party leader failed to regain their appeal to youth constituencies and undecided voters.

At the same time, Tisza has managed to preserve a consistent 15-20% lead in public opinion polls, despite the government party’s attempts to delegitimize the party through threatening to release an alleged sex video, infiltrating the party’s IT infrastructure with the involvement of the secret services, and most likely fabricating a suspected terrorist attack against critical gas infrastructure in Serbia. During the same period, independent media published a series of investigative articles that exposed the governing party’s neglect towards child abuse cases in public childcare institutions, heavy pollution detected in an EV battery plant, as well as close cooperation between Hungary and Russia on preventing EU sanctions against the latter.

“In sum, one of the most brutal campaigns has not caused volatility or the reversal of previous trends in public opinion but rather strengthened the consistent lead of Fidesz’s challenger.”

Potential Outcomes

While the most recent polls from reliable pollsters indicate a comfortable, approximately 20 per cent margin for Tisza, which would translate to a sizable majority in parliament, there are still reasons to consider different scenarios regarding the outcome. While one could even take into account the most extreme cases, below, I refer to the three most likely outcomes.

First,

"the single most likely result based on these polls is that Tisza will win a majority of the 199 mandates, however, it will not achieve a two-thirds majority which could be necessary for adopting far-reaching legislative changes."

This will allow the new government to adopt symbolic changes, but depending on the size and nature (relative or absolute) of its majority, it may experience stalemates or tough negotiations regarding key issues such as replacing heads of state institutions, passing the annual budget, or amending the electoral law. These challenges coupled with higher-than-reported public deficit and prolonged economic stagnation could challenge the new government’s legitimacy over its 4-year term.

Second, if Tisza’s margin is underreported in the polls (which could be the case due to respondents’ fears of repercussions), the challenger party could even secure a two-thirds majority in parliament, which could enhance its room for maneuver to restore democratic institutions, as well as to adopt more ambitious policy reforms, e.g. affecting the country’s tax regime. At the same time, this outcome would lessen the impetus for fixing some of the distortive elements of the current political system and carry the risk of simply replacing them with similarly partisan structures.

Finally, a narrow win by Fidesz is also plausible if the party manages to mobilize passive rural voters who are underrepresented in the polls. Potential voter intimidation and vote buying may also increase the number of Fidesz voters. This scenario could lead to different outcomes depending on the size of Fidesz’s majority, on whether the far-right Our Homeland party passes the electoral threshold and provides external support to a Fidesz-led cabinet, and on whether the opposition accepts this outcome as legitimate. Narrow wins on both sides would likely stir civil unrest and deepen already extreme political polarization in the country.

Implications

Most expectations regarding a potential Fidesz win raise concerns about further autocratization and repercussions, including the revitalization of the Act on the Transparency of Public Life, shelved in spring 2025 which could stifle independent media and NGOs. While this would be a logical continuation of Fidesz’s past trajectory, the party is unlikely to get the necessary (i.e., two-thirds) majority to maintain its course of action, therefore, it is more reasonable to expect a weakened, internally factionalized governing party that will see more cases of elite defection, and one which will need to make concessions against powerful lobbies in key sectors such as banking and retail. This will not necessarily trigger democratic restoration but will limit Fidesz’s power to retaliate against its political opponents.

The more plausible outcome sees a Tisza win, with potential implications which we tried to foreshadow in our “Confronting Goliath – Hungarian Authoritarian Elections in Comparative Perspective” discussion series from several angles, considering economic prospects, media, Russian interventions, EU-Hungary relations, and rule of law restoration.

“While in Tisza’s rhetoric, democratic restoration appears as a priority, more immediately pressing issues such as fixing basic infrastructure like railways, improving the quality of service in public healthcare and education may easily override it in practice.”

Depending on the size of its majority, a potential Tisza government may face difficulties in replacing incumbents in key institutions such as the Constitutional Court, the State Audit Office, and the Supreme Court (Kúria). However, even in such an instant, it will most probably implement two of its core electoral promises: joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), and establishing its own anti-corruption agency to investigate past abuses of public funds.

"The pace of democratic restoration will largely depend on the prospects of the Hungarian economy, which look gloomy for 2026 and 2027."

In the field of media, a new Tisza cabinet would certainly restructure public media in an attempt to restore its long-abandoned impartiality. Whether this would unfold via a drastic overhaul amid public skepticism as it has in Poland or if it could result in a genuinely non-partisan and high quality media service is an open question. In terms of the regulation of commercial media, Tisza is expected to adopt non-partisan criteria in awarding broadcasting licenses, and refrain from channeling public funds towards friendly outlets. At the same time, it remains dubious to what extent elected representatives and members of the government would remain open to answer critical requests from independent media, to which they already had an ambivalent relationship during the campaign.

In terms of economic recovery, the markets await the potential democratic turn with a perhaps exaggerated optimism which is already reflected in the current value of the national currency and the devaluation of companies close to Fidesz on the stock market. This enthusiasm is backed by an expectation that Hungary could be the “next Polish miracle” and that once the sphere of small- and medium-sized enterprises is liberated from the suffocating political environment, innovation will thrive. This optimism has at least two structural limitations: high public deficit aggravated by campaign period overspending, and the previous government’s overemphasis on heavily export-reliant and low-value-added industries, especially battery production for electric vehicles. At the same time, the availability of frozen EU funds could boost the economy in the short run and help overcome some of these structural deficiencies.

After a campaign in which President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen was portrayed on Fidesz party billboards as a villain conspiring with Volodymyr Zelensky to use Hungarian taxpayer’s money to fund Ukraine, and the Hungarian Foreign Minister was revealed to have shared details of EU negotiations with Russia, it is easy to see how Hungary-EU relations could only improve from this point.

“Tisza being a prominent member of the European People’s Party (Fidesz’s former party group), coupled with an overall optimism towards Hungary’s re-democratization, the country’s negotiating position would certainly improve, enabling deeper (re)integration.”

This could materialize in steps towards introducing the euro as a national currency, something that Tisza has pledged to do by 2030. The Visegrad Four regional cooperation could also be revitalized, although tensions regarding Tisza’s skepticism towards Ukraine’s EU membership would likely remain an obstacle.

Tisza’s election would cause an immediate mood swing and a wave of euphoria in larger cities, especially Budapest, which have long been opposition strongholds and will feel liberated. This will most probably materialize in spontaneous street festivals after the elections, and a sense of regained cultural openness afterwards.

“In case of a tight difference, euphoria could be met with potentially violent protests, leading to a protracted contentious period with frequent episodes of civil unrest.”

While a potential Tisza government is unlikely to bring back the hundreds of thousands of young professionals who already emigrated to Western Europe (mostly Germany, the UK, Austria, and increasingly to the Netherlands and Spain), but it may decrease the share of young people who are currently considering leaving the country. On the other hand, another Fidesz victory would most definitely induce another massive exodus, reflecting the lost hopes of several generations to end autocratization in Hungary.

Regardless of the outcome, this election is likely to shape Hungary’s future well beyond the next four-year cycle.

Bálint Mikola is a Political Scientist, working as a researcher at the CEU Democracy Institute, focusing on illiberalism, political communication and social media. He has published extensively on illiberal cultural policy, as well as on intra-party democracy. He has taught courses at CEU, ELTE, and Corvinus University of Budapest.

This article is published under the sole responsibility of the author, with editorial oversight. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial team, CIVICA, or the CEU Democracy Institute.