Six Takeaways From Sunday’s Hungarian Election
On Sunday the people of Hungary and opponents of authoritarianism everywhere rejoiced at the defeat of Viktor Orban, who ruled the country for 16 years and pioneered ways to subvert democracy that have been copied around the world, including by Donald Trump and his allies here at home. It would be convenient if we could take the lessons from this somewhat shocking turn of events and call them a blueprint for opposition leaders everywhere, including here, but the truth, as always, is messier. While there are certainly lessons to take away from Peter Magyar’s win and aspects that rhyme with our politics, there are others that are uniquely Hungarian.
As a Hungarian-American on my mother’s side, this election was very personal to me, and I had the joy of celebrating Sunday with a room full of Hungarians at a Manhattan apartment. Frankly, as a half-Indian/half-Hungarian American, I’ve long been embarrassed by the Modi/Orban/Trump troika, and was starting to think maybe the problem was me. But for anyone wondering why I am deep-diving a foreign election, the Orban resistance is something I’ve followed for a long time, and just as people like Steve Bannon have learned powerfully evil lessons from Orban, we should also learn lessons from the successful opposition movement against him.
1. This was first and foremost an election against Viktor Orban. As telegenic as Peter Magyar is, and as much as has been made about his name (the equivalent of “Joe America”), this coalition included as broad a tent as possible to take down an authoritarian regime. It was a bold and interesting move that Peter Magyar, a former member of Orban’s Fidesz Party, essentially started a brand new party to take on Orban two years ago. (TISZA technically existed, but it would be like someone using the “Reform Party” here to start a national movement.) He did this both for strategic reasons, given the widespread unpopularity and dysfunction of other opposition parties, because he could have more control, and also so the party could be a blank slate onto which people could project their anti-Orban sentiments. (Think elements of Obama ‘08.)
Some historical context here matters. For all of his anti-democratic measures, like packing the courts, taking over state media and the university system, and driving out dissidents, Orban was undeniably popular with broad swaths of Hungary through his first and probably second re-election. A lot of the criticisms now levied against him were there last time, in 2022, and Hungary’s splintered opposition movement vowed to come together to stop him. But that effort was mired with the factional problems familiar to any lefty here in the U.S, and Orban won again. This time, TISZA, a center-right project, was able to keep the tent broad enough that liberal Budapest voters could enthusiastically get behind it, knowing that the restoration of democracy was essential for a long-term path to victory.
This whole scenario doesn’t really translate to the U.S. Though we’ve all had the late night conversation about new/third parties here in America, we’ve so stubbornly remained a two-party system, it’s hard to imagine that breaking between now and 2028. A friend asked me if the moderates’ takeaway from this will be running a moderate Republican against Trump as the Democratic nominee. While I don’t think our primary system would allow for that, the underrated part of Magyar’s trajectory is that he came out of nowhere. I think we should be prepared for someone fresh and lacking in political baggage to capture the public imagination, much like Barack Obama did from 2005-2008. That person may not have a track record that inspires confidence, but the public may not care. (Think of Graham Platner in Maine.) In the era of “out with the old, in with the new,” a person’s vibe matters more than their record of accomplishment or ideology, and think purely in those terms feels dated.
Lastly, in the U.S. we have seen the limitations of a purely anti-Trump agenda. The next candidate to lead the Democratic Party and then the country needs to have a positive vision for people.
2. The opposition out organized Orban - by a lot. Magyar was an absolute workhorse. He and his team organized rallies across the country (which, to be fair, is more like the size of a U.S. state) relentlessly. This built constant energy for the campaign. It was hard not to be inspired by thousands of your countrymen holding candles in places not known for political rallies. This is not a unique innovation - James Talarico’s Senate campaign comes to mind, and we could once again invoke Obama ‘08.
In the aftermath of the 2020 primaries, where Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren held monster rallies, but lost to Joe Biden, it might be tempting to write off the role of rallies on the campaign trail. Likewise, much was made about the sputtering energy of Trump’s 2024 rallies right before he won a landslide. But there’s something about the energy and imagery of hope that made a Magyar rally feel different than say, a Kamala Harris rally. It was the underlying belief that something different, something seismic, could be happening. Which candidate and campaign will be able to generate that here? My money would be on AOC, if she ran, but as I just mentioned, handicapping based on today’s known leaders is itself a mistake.
3. Magyar’s messaging was very simple, and he repeated it often. (Think Zohran Mamdani’s run for mayor last year.) He was laser-focused on Orban’s corruption. I wish this were transferable to US politics, but as someone who used to work on corruption issues, I just don’t think Americans care as much about it as an electoral issue. Perhaps it’s our society’s unlimited devotion to making money by any means possible that causes people to be unmoved, or the cynical belief that everyone acts in their self-interest.
Some analysis out of Hungary suggests that corruption matters more to people when they are struggling with their own economic hardship, and I’d like that to be true. It is also true, however, that in Hungary corruption is associated with the old guard Communist regime people hated, so it’s a good thing to lean into, and something Orban himself weaponized when he was the oppositional figure to the post-Communist leftovers running the Hungarian government in the 90s. I don’t know what the equivalent hook would be here, and that is of course the holy grail that all the 2028 hopefuls are hunting for now and in the months ahead.
4. Despite the landslide, the red/blue divide remains. As with many countries, including ours, there is a serious urban/rural, cosmopolitan/nationalistic divide in Hungary. Just as Republicans use our system to great advantage in controlling the U.S. Senate, Orban has always dominated the rural areas, neutralizing the huge pockets of dissent against him in Budapest and other cities. Orban failed to sufficiently exploit that divide this time around. Even so, in his concession speech he repeatedly highlighted the millions of people who had voted for him. Hungary had its highest voter turnout of all-time, which is awesome, and also serves as a reminder that Orban’s base was and remains real, even in defeat. (The 74 million Trump voters in his 2020 defeat come to mind.)
I don’t think being Putin (or Trump’s) ally made much of a case to bolster Orban to his base voters this cycle. In the past, his cozy relationships with Russia and China have benefitted rural Hungarians economically, whether through cheap energy prices or manufacturing jobs, which doesn’t seem to be the case as much now. In contrast, a guy literally named “Joe America” (Magyar means “Hungarian”) made a very pro-Hungary, pro-nationalism, pro-independence case while retaining a cosmopolitan vibe to keep Budapest in his corner. Budapest ran up the score yesterday, but Magyar prevailed in places Orban has never lost. (Think Obama winning Indiana, but like 10 other states like that.) Is there something for us to glean from that?
Even though centrist commentators love smacking down the progressive base as hopelessly out of touch and electorally repellant, it’s clear to me that many progressives would get behind a Dan Osborn-style populist who could demonstrably win in 2028 if that person was a charismatic and sincere outsider, rather than a consultant-shaped, poll-tested “mod.” The former could retain core Blue support while going after the heartland, while the latter would struggle with both ends of the spectrum.
But if there is any lesson from Hungary about polarization, it’s that it very much remains alive, and will be something Magyar will inevitably have to confront as he governs.
5. The margin of victory had to be huge. For those of us at the Hungarian elections watch party in Manhattan, we were relieved, though not surprised, to see Magyar defeat Orban. The real shocker, however, was seeing Orban concede so early in the night. The consensus worry going into Sunday was that Magyar and TISZA would have a narrow lead, at which point the shenanigans would kick in, like “Stop the Steal” on steroids. After all, Orban controls the media and the courts. True, the EU had made some noise about standing up to Orban if he did this, but when had he been intimidated by them before? But when the early results showed TISZA up on Fidesz 51-40% before most of Budapest’s numbers reported, there was no way to cook those books. At the national level in the U.S., I doubt the 2028 election could ever reach that level of blow-out. But given how used to razor tight elections Americans have become, perhaps a more modest number (like 54-46%) could put Trump’s meddling out of reach. Short of that - buckle up.
There’s also the irony that the size of the landslide was of Orban’s own doing. One of Orban’s early “election reforms” had altered the formula by which the winning margins translated into Parliamentary support, which had helped lock in his power for years. TISZA ultimately won a little over 53% of the vote, but came away with a comfortable supermajority in Parliament, an outcome that served to Orban’s benefit in elections past.
That’s kind of the story of the gerrymander. When legislatures here tinker endlessly with maps, they aren’t actually changing how the voters feel, just how they’re slotted around, which actually leaves the incumbent party quite vulnerable in a wave year. You saw this in New York in 2018, where Republicans in the State Senate had used every gerrymandering trick in the book to maintain their majority. It took one anti-Trump wave in the midterms to not only flip the State Senate, but flip it almost 2-1, and put it out of reach to New York Republicans for a generation. I’m looking with particular interest this fall at Wisconsin, which has long been a 50/50 state politically, but controlled by Republicans in the State Legislature since 2010 due to extreme gerrymandering. They could be staring down a similar tidal wave.
6. The road ahead will be hard. Over the last 16 years, Orban has completely re-written the country’s institutions, and his allies sit in every pocket of the government, corporate, media, and academic sector. As a former Fidesz member, Magyar is keenly aware of this. We’ve also seen challenges in nearby Poland, where the transition back to democracy from autocracy has been a bumpy ride. Reforming, restoring and reviving these institutions will not happen overnight, and here in America we should be watching closely to see what we can learn from that process.
I’ve seen that some on the left (not Hungarians, from what I can observe) didn’t even wait for the election to be called to denounce Magyar’s centrist policies or foreign policy views. No one I know thinks he is perfect. But I think he should be given grace on his efforts to root out corruption and revive democracy, recognizing that there will be many political differences of opinion on issues in the years ahead, and those should be vigorously debated. That’s democracy, that’s what we’ve been fighting for. No question this dynamic will be at issue here in the U.S. as the Democratic Party searches for a unifying figure who can hold progressives and moderates together both to win the 2028 election and to govern after.
As someone who vowed not to return to the motherland until Orban was removed from power, I am looking forward to my next trip Hungary, which is surely a vibe right now. After that, I’ll share a follow up dispatch on the progress and pitfalls of unwinding authoritarianism. Til then…back to our usual domestic programming.
[Janos Marton is the national director of Dream Corps JUSTICE, an organization committed to building broad consensus to transform the criminal legal system at the state and federal level. Janos is a born and raised New Yorker, and after beginning his career as an organizer, returned home to attend law school. Since then, he has fought for racial justice as a civil rights lawyer, taken on corruption in New York politics (including Andrew Cuomo) as special counsel to the Moreland Commission, and investigated NYPD misconduct. As advocacy director of JustLeadershipUSA, Marton managed the historic #CLOSErikers campaign and later went on to help launch the St. Louis #ClosetheWorkhouse campaign. He then ran criminal justice programs across the country for the American Civil Liberties Union.]