Why Orbán Lost

The Hungarian opposition’s decisive victory over Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party has been greeted with relief across the democratic world. Armed with a constitutional majority, the center-right Tisza party and its leader, Péter Magyar, are now poised to dismantle Orbán’s 16-year grip on state institutions. What will be harder, however, is confronting the public demand for illiberal rule that sustained it.

Tisza’s success shows that even a highly entrenched regime can be defeated at the polls, despite institutional capture, media dominance, and electoral engineering. This matters because Orbán’s Hungary has long been more than a national story. It provided proof of concept for the global new right, demonstrating that a politics opposed to human rights and equality is viable in the West.

Orbán was unusually explicit about this ambition. Educated at the University of Oxford on a scholarship funded by George Soros, he turned against the liberal order with a clarity and consistency that few of his counterparts could match. It is no coincidence that new-right figures like US Vice President JD Vance, who visited Hungary just days before the election to campaign for Orbán, have drawn intellectual and political inspiration from his rule.

Magyar now enters office with the institutional advantages that once sustained Orbán’s rule. Hungary’s majoritarian electoral law gives a significant advantage to the largest party. For years, Western observers rightly criticized this system. Tisza should now be credited for using the system to its advantage. By consolidating virtually all support across the opposition spectrum, it secured roughly 53% of the vote—nearly matching Orbán’s result four years ago—and translated that into a constitutional supermajority.

Orbán’s swift concession and personal congratulations to Magyar suggest that fears of institutional obstruction in the transition of power may not materialize. Taken together, these developments represent a genuine victory for European democracy.

The danger, however, is once again to declare “the end of history.” Hungary’s illiberal system endured for 16 years not only because of brinkmanship and repression, but also because it met a durable social demand—for xenophobia, hierarchy, and a politics of division.

That demand has not disappeared. By most conventional policy measures, Orbán’s record has long been disastrous, with the economy lagging and public services in disarray. But Hungarian voters elected him four times. Even now, in defeat, Fidesz and Our Homeland Movement, a more extreme far-right party, command the loyalty of about 43% of the electorate. This is hardly a fringe.

We now have ample experience of liberal governments returning to power after new-right rule, from Joe Biden in the United States to Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. In none of these cases did electoral victory produce systemic catharsis. Swing voters changed sides, but the core electorate that sustained these regimes did not.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Poland. In 2023, after two terms of new-right rule, the broad coalition led by Donald Tusk won a result marginally stronger than Tisza’s. Yet this did not produce a lasting political realignment. Less than two years later, Poles elected hard-right Karol Nawrocki as the country’s semi-executive president. Electoral victory changed the government—but not the electorate.

Faced with that reality, Tusk adjusted. His government has shifted rightward on issues such as immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. Magyar is already decidedly following the same path. A longtime Fidesz insider, he has never been a committed liberal. Determined to defeat Orbán, liberal and left-wing voters showed unprecedented discipline by rallying behind Tisza, leaving their own parties without representation in the new parliament. As a result, much of Orbán’s conservative policy agenda may continue.

But this political calculus need not constrain liberal actors outside government, including civil-society groups, scholars, educators, and journalists. Since illiberal democracy endured because of popular demand, its defeat will require confronting that demand directly. Liberals must treat Hungary not as a system to repair, but as a society to persuade.

The current disillusion with Orbán creates a rare opening. Domestic and international experts can help a post-Orbán government deliver tangible gains, including better schools, more reliable health care, and a less corrupt state. But liberals should not fall into the trap of regarding such improvements as “non-political” and expecting them to speak for themselves. They must be framed and defended as the product of an open society—one that can deliver both effective government and a broader sense of dignity and social cohesion.

Hungary stands to gain politically and economically from moving closer to countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands. These societies manage to accommodate their more conservative elements while remaining open and globally engaged. It makes far more sense for Hungary to embrace such a model, rather than the authoritarian playbook of Russia or Turkey.

Reversing a decade and a half of normative change will not be easy. But unless addressed head-on, the myths, resentments, and paranoia fueling Orbán’s brand of illiberalism will remain intact and available to be reactivated.