The victory by Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party in the Hungarian election was historic in more ways than one. Zsófia Barta and Jan Rovny explain the result not only ended 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz but also cemented a fundamental change in the Hungarian party system.
Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party won a landslide victory in the Hungarian elections on 12 April, ending 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz. As a strong centrist political force, Tisza represents a historic development in Hungarian party politics since the 1990s.
From its early, gradual democratisation, the Hungarian party system was notable for its strong cultural polarisation. Unlike the Czech Republic or Slovakia, where economic issues dominated political cleavages, Hungary’s divisions were primarily cultural and historical.
The key concern – the interpretation of the 1919 Treaty of Trianon, which dismembered the much larger Hungarian Kingdom, and the engagement with millions of extra-territorial Hungarian communities left by the treaty in neighbouring countries – provided a deeply polarising focal point.
Views of these events divided the left-liberal pole of politics, including the Hungarian Socialist Party and the liberals, while the conservative right, led and increasingly dominated by Fidesz, initially positioned itself as anti-communist and pro-market.
However, as the 1990s progressed, it was paradoxically the left-liberal camp led by the socialists that became the architect of Hungary’s market transformation, privatising state assets and integrating the country into global capitalism through European integration. Meanwhile, Fidesz, originally a liberal, anti-communist force, began to embrace nationalist conservatism.
Fidesz and Orbán
Fidesz’s return to power in 2010 marked a turning point. Its long-time leader, Viktor Orbán, consolidated power by rewriting the constitution, curtailing judicial independence, restricting media freedom and altering electoral rules to favour incumbents. These changes effectively transformed Hungary into an illiberal democracy, where electoral competition was circumscribed and checks and balances largely weakened.
Economically, Fidesz pursued a distinctive path: while implementing some liberal policies (such as flat taxes and corporate tax cuts), it also embraced protectionism, nationalising key sectors like banking, energy and utilities. This economic nationalism aimed to shield domestic interests from global competition and foster a clientelistic class loyal to the Fidesz regime.
During these years, the opposition remained fragmented and ineffective. Given the regime’s control over mainstream media, the opposition had a hard time communicating beyond the liberal strongholds of Budapest and major cities. It also had found it difficult to reconcile its internal diversity, which ranged from left-wing socialist (DK), over liberal environmentalists, to eventually even include a disenchanted radical right party (Jobbik) that moderated its positions in light of Fidesz nationalism.
Even when united against Fidesz, as in the 2022 parliamentary elections, it struggled to break through in rural areas and among older voters. With Jobbik representing the largest opposition force up to 2018 (with around 20-25% of the vote), Fidesz’s electoral camp was seen to be most vulnerable to incursion from the right – which perhaps explains Fidesz’s continuous shift towards conservatism on cultural issues.
After its split in 2018, Jobbik rapidly lost votes and its defecting faction, which became a new party under the name of Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland, MHM) is now Fidesz’s (much weaker) challenger on the right, with the party securing around 6% of the vote in the 2026 elections.
Tisza and the new electoral landscape in Hungary
The arrival of Tisza on the scene changed the landscape completely, progressively vacuuming up the opposition vote practically from its first appearance. In the European elections of June 2024 (a few months after its launch), the party garnered a third of the vote, with other opposition parties sinking into single digits.
In the 2026 elections, Tisza excluded the possibility of electoral alliance with any of the older opposition parties, demanding instead that they unilaterally withdraw their candidates in favour of Tisza, which in many cases did indeed happen. The two left-leaning opposition parties that did field an electoral list and individual candidates (DK and MKKP) finished well below the parliamentary threshold.
Figure 1 shows the electoral landscape in the wake of the election, with the size of bubbles representing the vote shares of each party. The left panel of the figure places parties on the economic left-right scale (x-axis) and the cultural scale ranging from conservatism to liberalism (y-axis).
This panel highlights the historical dynamics of Hungarian party politics, showing important variation on the cultural dimension, combined with rather limited differentiation on economic issues, where most parties stand near the centre.
Figure 1: Placement of parties that fielded lists in the 2026 Hungarian elections
Note: The left panel compares economic left-right placement with cultural conservative-liberal placement (TAN-GAL). The right panel compares EU position with cultural conservative-liberal placement (TAN-GAL). The size of bubbles represents the vote shares of each party. Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey 2024.
The right-hand panel of figure 1 reproduces the cultural conservative-liberal scale on the y-axis, relating it to EU positioning on the x-axis. This panel shows the close relationship between the cultural and EU preferences of political parties. While more culturally liberal parties tend to be more supportive of the EU, cultural conservatives, such as Fidesz or Mi Hazank (MHM), tend to oppose EU integration. Tisza, the new election winner, stands conspicuously in the centre.
How Tisza defeated Fidesz
During the 2026 election, Tisza positioned itself as a centrist, pro-European alternative to both Fidesz and the traditional opposition. The party’s appeal lies in its moderate positioning on cultural issues, signalling more conciliatory positions towards the European Union and European policy in supporting Ukraine.
Simultaneously, the party has rather hazy ideological positioning. Magyar has eschewed taking a clear stance on polarising issues, such as LGBTQ rights, or on the precise nature of Hungary’s relationship with Ukraine and its defence against Russia’s invasion. Tisza is seeking to maximise its electoral coalition while broadly advocating for anti-corruption reforms, the restoration of democratic institutions and a pragmatic approach to economic and foreign policy.
Through this positioning, Tisza managed to capture the centre that Fidesz had vacated in its continued shift towards conservatism on cultural issues (such as nationalism, immigration or LGBTQ rights) and attract large swathes of the electorate from the left who were disillusioned by the inability of smaller leftist opposition parties to offer an alternative to Fidesz.
Tisza’s success has thus cemented the changes we have seen in the Hungarian party system since the party’s emergence in 2024. The question that remains is how the Hungarian party system will continue to develop with Tisza in government.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: franz12 provided by Shutterstock.
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