Viktor , standard bearer of the international populist right wing and Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, has been defeated. The election took place on April, 12th 2026 and saw Péter Magyar, a former ally of Orbán’s, achieve a sweeping victory in the highest turnout election in the nation’s history. This is terrific news both for Hungarians fed up with Orbán and for global opponents of the reactionary right. Measurable outcomes of this election will not be available for some time, nor will a truly well informed analysis of the shifts among Hungarian voters that led to this result. Still, there is much to be learned from Orbán’s ousting.
Perhaps the first and most important lesson that this victory can teach us is that entrenched populist anti-democratic leaders can be beaten. The defeats of Trump in 2020 and Bolsonaro in 2022 both dealt blows to the global right, but neither Trump nor Bolsonaro were nearly as dug in as Orbán. Orbán had 16 uninterrupted years and several supermajorities in parliament to gerrymander voting constituencies, pack courts, clamp down on freedom of speech, demonize immigrants, eliminate checks and balances, diminish faith in the electoral system, and staff virtually all government positions with those loyal to him. Orbán, often compared to figures like Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was considered essentially unassailable until this year. He is an undeniably deft operator displaying a machiavellian capacity to be both loved and feared by his constituents. His rhetorical style has proven a quite successful model for budding authoritarians all over the political and geographic region many of us refer to as “the west”. And yet his charisma, his skill as a manager, his insatiable appetite for personal profit, and his strong connections with leaders like Trump and Putin could not save him.
There are several explanations for the apparent durability of Hungarian democracy despite constant assaults for nearly 2 decades. The first is the looming shadow of EU financial coercion. Hungary has repeatedly been accused of the misuse of EU funds and has had billions of Euros withheld over several years as a result. We see in this case that a supranational entity can act as a barrier for would-be dictators in instances where financial incentives and deterrents apply. We have seen this phenomenon in the EU before, notably in the case of Poland where Donald Tusk ousted Mateusz Morawiecki in 2023 despite consistent attempts by Morawiecki’s Law and Justice party to diminish democracy during his 6 years in office.
Another explanation is the broad unpopularity of Orbán in 2026. Polling in Hungary is not particularly reliable, but it’s clear that Orbán’s standing is considerably diminished compared to only a year or two ago. This appears to be due to the tripartite factors of a struggling economy, persistent corruption, and Orbán’s perceived closeness with Russia in particular, but also the US to a lesser extent. By losing as spectacularly as Orbán did, he demonstrated that for populists to retain power in a democracy they must remain popular. The election of Donald Trump, the possibility of a Farage premiership in the UK, and the enduring strength of Argentina’s Milei, among other cases, reinforce the mistaken belief that far-right populists do not need to be well liked by the majority to attain and maintain power. Orbán’s loss reminds us that populist leaders in electoral democracies are tethered inexorably to the opinions and living conditions of real people.
Perhaps the most fascinating and informative element of this election has been the skill with which Péter Magyar defused attacks by Orbán and Fidesz aligned media. Threats were made during the campaign to leak a sex tape of Magyar, Tisza offices were raided and computers were seized due to accusations by the government of possession of child pornography, Magyar interns were arrested and interrogated, and Magyar was accused of taking money from the Ukrainian government. Magyar undoubtedly held his own cards in that exchange and repeatedly used his former-insider status to embarrass and expose Fidesz members for their corruption and hypocrisy. Still, it was not Magyar’s attacks that were notable as much as his strategy of coming out ahead of opposition attacks. Magyar publicly predicted that efforts would be made to release unflattering footage of him, his surrogates warned of a false flag operation by the Hungarian government to boost Orbán’s popularity or grant them an excuse to clamp down on freedoms, and he essentially ignored discussions of Ukraine or social issues to deprive Orbán of soundbites. Magyar displayed a degree of personal restraint as well as an ability to predict Orbán’s playbook that should be emulated by other anti-authoritarian opposition leaders.
Though there are a great many other thoughts I wish to touch on in this essay, in the interest of brevity I will close with only one. This is a moment of tremendous optimism for people all over the globe, especially those of us at threat of losing our own democracies. I think we have all earned the right to enjoy the relief and hope that we feel. Still, I cannot help but be anxious about what lessons we might learn as we pick this case apart, if we indeed learn anything at all. We tend to mistake massive electoral margins for massive support, and Tisza has won a massive electoral margin, but I recall the French presidential elections of 2017 and 2022 when Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen by way of support from the left. Between those two elections Macron steadily shifted to the right on both social and economic issues, and yet when 2022 came he won by a significantly lesser margin than he did the first time. It is my sincere hope that Magyar will not debase himself and his movement by offering concessions to those who he has just defeated. He has been elected on a mandate of change, and god willing change is coming.
I found this post to be a satisfying read because it captures the genuine optimism and caution I’m feeling about Hungary at the moment. The point about Orbán being far more entrenched than Trump or Bolsonaro is exactly right and something I had not fully thought through. He had 16 years and supermajorities to do all the standard authoritarian capture work that Bermeo describes as executive aggrandizement, and he still lost. Your analysis of Magyar’s strategy of getting out ahead of regime attacks is also really sharp because it inverts the usual populist playbook. Authoritarians like Orbán rely on controlling the timing of scandal and accusation, and Magyar refused to let him have that. The Macron comparison at the end is the part I keep thinking about. There’s a real risk that anti-authoritarian coalitions read electoral margins as ideological mandates when they are often just protest votes against the incumbent. If Magyar moderates toward Fidesz positions to court its former voters, I believe the coalition that just beat Orbán will fracture quickly, so hopefully he reads the moment correctly.