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Hungarians go to the polls on Sunday, April 12, in a general election which is drawing international attention far beyond what the country’s 9.5 million population would normally justify.
“I’ve never known anything like it. So many journalists have been asking for interviews, it’s astonishing,” says local political analyst Zoltán Ranschburg when discussing the interest preceding the forthcoming political battle between Europe’s longest-serving prime minister and his 45-year-old upstart and arch-rival, Péter Magyar.
The reasoning is simple: Hungary under Prime Minister Orbán is seen as a champion of the illiberal, right-wing nationalist trend, and policymakers globally are eyeing whether this can yet expand further, or be restrained and even forced into retrenchment by a democratic opposition emerging organically in the country. Orbán is also the main block on European Union funding plans for Ukraine.
This Orbán-Magyar battle was unimaginable just over two years ago; Magyar emerged in the aftermath of a national paedophile scandal that (inadvertently) destroyed the political career of his former wife, then-Minister of Justice Judit Varga. Within hours of her resignation, Magyar had voluntarily resigned his own positions (all gained through political connections), and began to denounce what he called the corruption and cronyism of the ruling Fidesz elite.
Within five months, Tisza, his adopted party, had won 30% of votes in the European Parliamentary elections, and by Christmas 2024, after hoovering up supporters from most other opposition parties across the political spectrum, it had nudged ahead of Fidesz in most polls.
“Tisza’s most important message from day one of their appearance has been that the state doesn’t work. There are many sub-points, problems with the healthcare, social security system, and railways, but the general message is that Fidesz has ruined the state. That’s campaign point number one,” says Ranschburg.
A Fidesz Loyalist Speaks Out
“I’ve been a Fidesz fan since the change of system in 1990. Immediately, I voted in the first election, when it was possible, I was 18. I see Viktor Orbán as the greatest politician in Europe and you only get one such born in a century. To me, he’s [a man] of outstanding quality, and up to now, everything he’s said in Europe has been right, we agree completely on everything, in connection with immigration, the war, the [lot].”
Attila Kovács, from Érd, attending the pro-government rally on Kossuth tér, March 15.
Crucially, Magyar has been building his party as one of national unity, in direct competition with Orbán’s own narrative, while denouncing the Fidesz elite as “a bunch of criminals,” Ranschburg adds.
Fidesz initially responded by trashing Magyar as a wife-beating madman leading a party of incompetents acting as “Brussels’ puppets,” Ranschburg says.
Since the first two angles of attack failed to gain traction, the Fidesz campaign has focused on the third, and now portrays Magyar as an ally of a “warmongering [President] Zelenszkyy-Brussels” axis intent on sucking Hungary’s young men and its money into the Russian-Ukraine war.
It is a narrative that has gained traction among core Fidesz supporters, as any observer at the pro-government “Peace March” on March 15 could observe from the placards carried by participants.
Magyar countered, declaring Orbán a traitor and pledging to keep Hungary firmly in NATO, the European Union and on track for membership of the euro.
The governing party has employed all its many resources in its fight to retain power: generous financial benefits have been given to first-time home buyers, mothers, members of the armed forces, and teachers. Low-cost loans and grants have been offered to SMEs, and farmers affected by a scandal-hit wholesale grain buyer in eastern Hungary, involving billions of forints, have been compensated with none of the usual bureaucratic delays.
Yet, against a backdrop of a stagnant economy and amid a string of new scandals, Tisza’s support has solidified, if not expanded further. Reports of forced prostitution of minors at a state reform school, multiple massive toxic pollution leaks at a battery plant north of Budapest and allegations that Russian military intelligence agents are in the capital to aid the government’s election campaign have not gone down well with many voters.
Government-linked think tanks, such as the Nézőpont Institute, put Fidesz at 46% voter support, and claimed that Tisza “was unable to cross the 40%” mark in its latest survey on March 19. All independent and left-leaning pollsters give Tisza a significant lead, however, typically of between 8-14 percentage points in their latest assessments.
A survey published by the 21 Research Center in early March gave the most pro-Tisza result, indicating Magyar’s party held a lead of 14 points over Fidesz among decided voters. The pollster believes this would mean the opposition party gaining a comfortable simple majority of 115 of parliament’s 199 seats if realised on voting day.
According to the think tank, Tisza leads in all types of municipality except villages, where Fidesz maintains a four-point advantage. Along with Tisza and Fidesz, 21 Research predicts that only the radical-right Our Homeland party would make it into the national assembly.
But Fidesz supporters note the polls underestimated their party’s popularity in 2022, and with 18 days to go before the big vote, and war in the Middle East causing convulsions in the oil, gas and financial markets, the outcome on April 12 remains in the balance.
For those who wish to experiment with at least some of the millions of possible outcomes in the Hungarian elections, the 21 Research Center, an independent political think tank and pollster, has created its very own Mandátumkalkulátor, or parliamentary seat predictor.
It’s in Hungarian, but it’s easy for anyone to understand how to input the voting combinations into a model that takes into account support for the five leading parties qualified for the party-list vote in 2026.
For example, if the Tisza Party has 48% of the list vote, Fidesz 45%, Our Homeland 5%, Democratic Coalition 1% and the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party 1% (a not impossible result), the prediction in terms of parliamentary seats is 95 for Tisza, 99 for Fidesz and five for Our Homeland.
This example illustrates Fidesz’s built-in advantage in the system; with fewer votes than Tisza, the governing party still emerges as the largest party in Parliament. It also results in a hung Parliament, allowing Our Homeland to be the kingmaker, potentially able to form a coalition government (albeit with the thinnest of majorities) with either of the two larger parties.
The predictor has its limitations; for example, each party must get a minimum 1% of the vote to function. As such, it is only a guide to the likely results, but 30 minutes of experimenting with voting combinations reveals the wild swings possible in terms of seats won with only a minimal change in the input vote percentages.
https://mandatumkalkulator.21kutatokozpont.hu
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of March 27, 2026.
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