Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power is over and a system condemned as an “electoral autocracy” lies in tatters, defeated by a 45-year-old former party insider who convinced a majority of Hungarians to bring it to an end.
“We did it,” Péter Magyar told a crowd of cheering supporters beside the River Danube, overlooking Budapest’s magnificent parliament on the other side. “Together we overthrew the Hungarian regime.”
Preliminary election results, based on more than 98% of counted votes, put his Tisza party on course for an extraordinary 138 seats, with Orbán’s Fidesz on 55 and the far-right Our Homeland on six.
The landslide will not only allow Magyar to overturn Orbán’s increasingly unpopular domestic policies, but reset Hungary’s global relationships.
Orbán has been a close partner of both US President Donald Trump – earning an in-person appearance from US Vice-President JD Vance in the final week of the campaign – and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and he had become a big thorn in the side of the EU and Ukraine.
Magyar, on the other hand, stood on a platform of distancing Hungary from Russia in favour of more cordial ties with the EU and Ukraine.
