Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held what he called a “Day of Friendship” rally in Budapest. His star guest was US Vice President JD Vance.
Vance had flown to Budapest under the guise of celebrating Hungarian-US friendship. In practice, he was there to campaign. At a joint press conference with Orbán in a Hungarian monastery, Vance said he was there to help. He later took the stage at the MTK Sportpark arena in Budapest and told the crowd:
I’m here because of the moral cooperation between our two countries. Because what the United States and Hungary together represent under Viktor’s leadership and under President Trump’s is the defense of Western civilization… Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers? Then my friends, go to the polls in the weekend, stand with Viktor Orbán because he stands for you and he stands for all these things.
Five days later, Hungarians went to the polls in record numbers – and tossed out Orbán.
On Sunday, Orbán conceded defeat as results showed challenger Péter Magyar’s Tisza party winning by a landslide, securing 138 seats in the 199-seat parliament with 53.6% of the vote. Orbán’s Fidesz party won just 55 seats with 37.8%. Speaking to supporters, Orbán said the result was “painful for us, but clear.”
Orbán was the longest-serving leader in the European Union, having served as Hungary’s Prime Minister since 2010. Throughout his tenure, he consolidated power and became a key ally of both President Trump and Russian President Putin. Throughout his tenure, it seemed unlikely that anyone could unseat him. So how, after 16 years of power, did Orbán finally lose?
That’s the subject of today’s deep-dive.
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Orbán founded the Fidesz party in 1988 as a youth-led movement to oppose Hungary’s communist regime. When communism collapsed the following year, Fidesz helped lead the country’s democratic transition. Orbán first emerged on the national stage with a seven-minute speech at Heroes’ Square in Budapest, where an estimated 250,000 Hungarians had gathered.
“If we believe in our own power,” Orbán told the crowd, “we are able to finish communist dictatorship.”
Orbán served his first term as prime minister from 1998 to 2002, then returned in 2010. He consolidated power over the following 16 years, winning four consecutive elections, each with a parliamentary supermajority – two-thirds of all seats.
He used those majorities to pass more than 40 “cardinal laws,” reshaping Hungary’s courts, constitution, and electoral maps, while consolidating the media to align with his government. By 2018, Orbán’s party was estimated to directly or indirectly control around 80% of Hungary’s media.
In doing so, Orbán tilted the country’s political system toward him, while becoming one of the most well-known and controversial leaders in Europe. To critics, he was a wannabe dictator, eroding democracy in his country; to supporters, he was defending Western values against woke and bureaucratic institutions, like the EU.
Few world leaders were so polarizing or well-known, particularly coming from such a small country.
But a single scandal would sew the seeds for his defeat.
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