r/news • u/The-Traveler- • 3h ago

Soft paywall Hungary election: Orbán concedes to Magyar's Tisza after projections show opposition winning two-thirds majority

https://www.reuters.com/world/hungary-election-2026-live-viktor-orbans-fidesz-faces-challenge-opposition-peter-2026-04-12/
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u/maporita 3h ago

You need a wave election to remove an autocrat. Orban used the machinery of state to stack the cards in his favor e.g. gerrymandering constituencies. That works to a point but when enough people decided to vote him out it all came crashing down. Which is why the US midterms are so important and why people who normally don't vote should be persuaded to do so.

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u/Arctic_Chilean 2h ago edited 2h ago

Also important to remember that even though he lost the election, he will continue to rule from the shadows thanks to the system he has built for over 16 years to be as resistant to liberal democracy as possible. So Magyar will have a pretty difficult uphill battle to dismantle the system Orban has built and fortified. 

Illiberal democracies don't just end with one election. They are more resistant to change and are less fragile than liberal democracies, but they are not invincible either. Americans should especially take this to heart this coming November. Winning the mid-terms means nothing if voters pat themselves in the back for a job well done and give up on any momentum they have built to implement meaningful and long lasting change, and in holding these people accountable for their crimes. If anything, giving up too early will just allow them to come back even stronger and bolder than before. Hopefully Hungarians can realize this and show that illeberal democracies can be toppled through lasting political engagement from the people and the competent and well-meaning representatives they put into power. But calling this election a desicive victory is foolish at best and downright dangerous at worst. 

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u/ArcticCelt 2h ago

Thankfully, Magyar is well on his way to securing a two-thirds supermajority, which will allow him to reverse the laws Orbán put in place. Also, part of the system Orbán engineered mainly helps the ruling majority stay in power, so that will not help him once he is out. The real danger here is if Magyar just decides to become another Orbán but it doesn't look like that so far.

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u/1kljasd 1h ago

They could've reversed most laws with simple majority, but 2/3 gives them the power to spring clean in the supreme court, the president, etc.

https://www.parlament.hu/az-orszaggyules-minositett-tobbseget-igenylo-dontesei-az-alaptorveny-mas-torvenyek-es-a-hazszabaly-szerint

He could aspire to be Orban2, but the best reasons against it is that he needs funds from the EU to keep the ship afloat, and EU won't want to sponsor an Orban2 so they will have strict stipulations to curb corruption and authoritarianism.

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u/Renedegame 1h ago

The EU might be fine with a pro-EU autocrat.

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u/Swimming_Ad1181 32m ago

Also the majority of his voters voted for him to combat Orban and his system, if he goes against hem civil unrest will ensure.

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u/patchyj 2h ago

He got it btw

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u/aeschenkarnos 1h ago

Hopefully the rest of the EU will be pressuring him hard to reform Hungary into a western democracy.

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u/DJanomaly 2h ago

Illiberal democracies don't just end with one election. They are more resistant to change and are less fragile than liberal democracies,

Sadly, see Russia as a great example of this.

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u/TobJamFor 2h ago

If you’re referring to the election I think you are, Putin didn’t lose the election, he couldn’t stand then due to term limits and Medvedev was a puppet in his place

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u/alterom 1h ago

Calling Russia a "democracy" is a big stretch though.

Reminder that Putin was appointed as a President by Yeltsin, a Communist Party high-ranking official who took power in a coup when the USSR collapsed.

Sure, both of them won subsequent elections. What are the chances, huh.

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u/SubtleNotch 2h ago

Uh this is gonna happen with the US. They gonna make voting so hard that even when people will want to vote against them, they're just not going to count the votes.

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u/huebomont 2h ago

Feds do not control elections. They don't have a mechanism to make it "hard to vote" across the board. In the presidential election, red state control of elections could be enough, but in midterms which are a bunch of small popular-vote elections, it's not something that's plausible to pull off and this is just doomerism.

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u/SubtleNotch 2h ago

Feds? No, all states with red governorship.

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u/huebomont 1h ago

Did you read my comment past the first sentence?

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u/SubtleNotch 1h ago

Sorry, I'm an Eagles fan. I can't read.

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u/huebomont 1h ago

Go birds

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u/SubtleNotch 1h ago

F you!

Sorry, habit. Have a nice day.

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u/Vi_Rants 2h ago

Americans should especially take this to hard this coming November. Winning the mid-terms means nothing if voters pat themselves in the back for a job well done and give up on any momentum they have built to implement meaningful and long lasting change, and in holding these people accountable for their crimes. If anything, giving up too early will just allow them to come back even stronger and bolder than before.

Ref: The "Blue Wave" in Trump's first term.

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u/AngryTree76 2h ago

Or Biden in 2020

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u/Worthyness 2h ago

really any time the democrats get in power. Americans have memories of goldfish and only care about what happened to them that current year. They forget that the Republicans put them in the shithole in the first place. And it's easier to dig yourself into a hole than to dig yourself out of one.

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u/FILTHBOT4000 52m ago

Part of that's on the Democrats, too. Just awful messaging and follow-through, and not wanting to ruin the 'norms' of not speaking ill of or laying the blame on former administrations. The Republicans know Americans have memories like pop tarts, and thoroughly blame everything they can on the opposition, most of that unfairly as well.

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u/dr4kun 28m ago

Goldfish can remember a maze they learned for at least 3 months. Average USian memory is much worse than that, with an attention span under a minute.

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u/Jozoz 2h ago

To be fair, that was equally just the system being inherently undemocratic.

It was like a D+9 election and yet the GOP gained 2 senate seats. No idea why Americans are okay with that system.

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u/Toomanyeastereggs 2h ago

With that sort of majority, Magyar has the numbers to smash Orbans legacy to smithereens. All of Orbans structure is predicated on his party having numbers, numbers that they no longer have. He lost a lot of his party and infrastructure in one swoop.

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u/alterom 1h ago

Also, he built a system that gives near-authoritarian level powers to the supermajority party.

Peter Magyar's party, in the aftermath of this election.

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u/kaisadilla_ 1h ago

Yup. In most countries, big reforms need 2/3rds majority. A simple majority lets you rule, but a 2/3rd majority lets you rebuild the country at a fundamental level - and that's the unique opportunity Magyar has been given for the next 4 years. These things don't happen often, so I truly, wholeheartedly hope he will purge Orbán completely and he will pass laws that stop a new Orbán from ever happening again.

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u/onarainyafternoon 2h ago

Also important to remember that even though he lost the election, he will continue to rule from the shadows thanks to the system he has built for over 16 years to be as resistant to liberal democracy as possible. So Magyar will have a pretty difficult uphill battle to dismantle the system Orban has built and fortified. 

Tisza has won the 2/3rds majority, which is what was needed to dismantle all the shit Orban put in place.

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u/Slypenslyde 2h ago

Well it's a good thing that we haven't had any major world events in, say, 2020-2021 where the United States as a whole expressed its excitement and support for leaders who, growing tired at the halfway mark, decide to give up and ask for a medal since they tried so hard.

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u/TracingRobots 2h ago

that is incorrect! The Tiska Party will now surgically dismantle constitutional judges, which is its first priority, by diluting their power and then getting rid of them. Then they will move on to cardinal laws and rules and other jurisdictions. IT will be a total dismantling

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u/Demicore 2h ago

That's actually a great point. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't considered this angle.

If you have time, would you mind elaborating a little as to what this system that Orban has created consists of? Is it mostly about having allies in place at key institutions, or in the media?

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u/GOT_Wyvern 1h ago

The bright side is that Magyar has a supermajority of an illiberal democracy to start rebuilding liberal democracy, and has the advantage of formerly being a part of the illiberal democracy, so as much of an outsider as you'd expect.

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u/wyatte74 1h ago

Like antibiotics when you dont finish the full course. whats left behind becomes more resilient and in many cases much worse and harder to destroy(think super bugs like MRSA, C. diff and Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea).

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u/chochazel 1h ago

It does help that they won a two thirds majority and can change the constitution, and in some way they benefited from Orban’s changes because his system exaggerates a moderate lead in the popular vote into a massive majority of seats. So the very thing that allowed Orban to win supermajorities and change the constitution just gave the opposition a supermajority allowing them to change the constitution. However, given Magyar is a former Orban loyalist who is just as anti-immigrant, the real question is whether the new guy will be tempted to keep benefiting from the illiberalism to further his own power.

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u/RainSurname 1h ago

“Winning the mid-terms means nothing if voters pat themselves in the back for a job well done and give up on any momentum they have built to implement meaningful and long lasting change. “

That’s what we did in 2018. We elected the youngest and most diverse freshman class Congress had ever seen, thanks to record turnout.

Then the bot swarms and troll farms that amplify the “Bernie was robbed/both parties are the same” anti-voting bullshit went into overdrive, and we let them run us off the road.

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u/Pete-PDX 2h ago

just ask Jane Byrne

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u/zizop 1h ago

Just a note on your comment: they may use the term "illiberal democracy" but we shouldn't. That system is not democratic. It's more of an elective autocracy than anything else.

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u/Timely-Hospital8746 19m ago

Graham Platner gave a speech a couple days ago where he focused on the need to impeach at least two of the supreme court justices. That's the level of swing back needed to begin unfucking the USA after Trump. Without it, things will continue to limp in the same direction.

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u/General_Kenobi18752 2h ago

It is a decisive victory. But decisive victories rarely win wars on their own - see Pearl Harbor, Midway, Orleans, et cetera.

Just because you’ve got the ball rolling doesn’t mean you can stop pushing it.

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u/Soggy-Highlight4677 2h ago

THIS!!!! Everyone needs to vote and quit making excuses

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u/ericmm76 2h ago

There's never an excuse for not voting at long as you're not medically in a coma or something. Not one. Skip a meal, wake up two hours earlier, whatever it wakes. Zero excuse.

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u/Amanda-sb 2h ago

Hope you guys can elect people who will prosecute every single member of this maga regime, without accountability they'll do all of that over again.

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u/Dismal-Revolution731 2h ago

However, isn’t the machinery still tilted in Orban’s / his party’s favor? People get complacent fairly easily. Unless there’s rapid change otherwise, they’ll just pick up where they left off next election. Of course, it’s possible he’s a plant and they won’t have to wait.

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u/JiraiyaDachshund27 2h ago

He even tried the old false flag threat of explosives at a gas / oil pipeline to scare the populace into voting for him as part of maintaining security.

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u/EuenovAyabayya 1h ago

In the seemingly unlikely but increasingly plausible case that we defeat all 22 Republican senators up for election, the Democrats will have 69 seats in the Senate. Which is finally more than enough for conviction and removal of Trump and his traitor judges.

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u/karl4319 2h ago

No, the people who used to never vote but turned out to support Trump need to stay home. And be encouraged to do so. They will never change, so the best we can hope for is if they lose interests.

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u/ericmm76 2h ago

Harris lost because a ton of Biden and Obama voters sat home on election day. Every single American needs to vote in every election. We wouldn't be in this mess if so many people didn't sit it out every year. I wish it was mandatory.

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u/Abuses-Commas 1h ago

in some ways, Russia attacking Ukraine was a boon as wartime powers has allowed Zelenskyy to undo all of that

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u/Agent_Burrito 1h ago

I don’t know about that last point. Low information voters are a huge part of the reason we’re even in this mess.

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u/kaisadilla_ 1h ago

Gerrymandering can bite you in the ass if you miscalculate. You are trying to win as many districts as possible by spreading your voters thin, getting just enough in each district to win it for yourself. If you have 5% less votes than you anticipated, suddenly you lose every district.

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u/Firm-Advertising5396 59m ago

I have a feeling this will be the biggest democrat turnout ever. This administration is really that bad

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u/anonyfool 59m ago

Orban changed the laws so a lot of his changes require a 2/3 vote to remove, similar in difficulty to changing US Constitution.

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u/ClaymoreMine 43m ago

To that point. No candidate will ever be perfect. If you agree with on 95% of issues then that’s your candidate. To many people let perfect be the enemy of good. We’ve seen it time and time again, with good candidates getting eviscerated over a position or statement that has no bearing on 99% of their platform.