After winning power in Hungary, Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party has pledged to restore the country’s democracy. Gergő Medve-Bálint and Fernando Casal Bértoa write that while the party has a large enough majority to enact sweeping constitutional changes, undoing sixteen years of rule by Viktor Orbán and Fidesz remains a daunting task.
After sixteen consecutive years in power, Viktor Orbán and Fidesz lost Hungary’s parliamentary elections to the new centrist Tisza Party. With a historic turnout of nearly 80 percent, the opposition won a landslide victory, securing a comfortable two-thirds majority in parliament.
The roots of Fidesz’s decline
The erosion of Fidesz’s dominance began much earlier than this election. A critical turning point came in February 2024, when both President Katalin Novák and former Minister of Justice Judit Varga, then leading Fidesz’s European Parliament list, were forced to resign following a scandal involving a presidential pardon granted to an accomplice in a sex abuse case at a children’s home.
The episode severely undermined Fidesz’s long-standing rhetoric on family values and opened political space for a newcomer, Péter Magyar. Magyar, a former Fidesz insider and Varga’s ex-husband, quickly emerged as a credible challenger.
Positioning himself as a liberal-conservative reformer, he founded the Respect and Freedom Party (Tisza), which rapidly consolidated opposition voters. Within four months of Magyar entering the political arena, Tisza secured an unexpected 30 per cent in the 2024 European Parliament elections, effectively ending the fragmentation of the opposition camp and establishing itself as the sole viable alternative to Orbán.
Tisza’s rise was driven by its ability to channel mounting public discontent. Hungary’s economic performance has deteriorated markedly since Orbán’s last victory, with record-high inflation in 2023, declining public services in healthcare and education, and entrenched corruption and clientelism. These dynamics fostered the rise of government-aligned oligarchs occupying quasi-monopolistic positions in key sectors, including construction, banking, energy and tourism.
Orbán enjoyed an almost uninterrupted parliamentary supermajority for over a decade and a half. This allowed him to change the constitution at will and establish what he called an “illiberal democracy”, consolidating control over state institutions, public media and segments of the judiciary. But despite this, Fidesz proved unable to contain the growing dissatisfaction.
A doomed campaign
During the campaign, the government attempted to mobilise voters through a security-focused narrative, invoking external threats and war-related fears. This strategy failed, however, to resonate with a majority of the electorate.
Instead, Magyar managed to capitalise on everyday economic grievances and the declining quality of public services. Survey evidence suggested that only one-fifth of Hungarians believed their living standards had improved over the previous four years, with younger cohorts in particular expressing deep pessimism about both their prospects and the government’s performance.
Magyar’s campaign strategy further amplified this shift. Employing a populist, but disciplined style of political communication, he conducted an extensive nationwide tour, visiting more than 500 settlements over the last two years.
Orbán, by contrast, maintained a more distant campaign presence and only intensified his outreach in the final weeks. By then, his public appearances increasingly conveyed a loss of momentum, which unsettled core supporters and reinforced perceptions of vulnerability.
Leaked conversations involving Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó’s exchanges with Sergey Lavrov (his counterpart in Russia), further damaged the government’s credibility. These revelations not only contradicted Fidesz’s sovereignty narrative but also heightened concerns among EU partners regarding Hungary’s geopolitical alignment.
Orbán’s invincibility unravels
The final phase of the campaign exposed deeper cracks within the regime. Senior figures from the police, military and intelligence services publicly alleged key state institutions had been subordinated to Fidesz’s interests.
At the same time, segments of the economic elite began to distance themselves from the government, while influential cultural actors openly endorsed Tisza. Together, these developments eroded the long-standing perception of Orbán’s invincibility.
Electoral dynamics reflected sharp social cleavages. Support for Fidesz remained concentrated among older voters, particularly those over 65, while younger cohorts overwhelmingly backed Tisza.
Educational divides were similarly pronounced: Tisza dominated among university and secondary school graduates, held a competitive position among skilled workers and trailed only among the least educated. Despite Fidesz’s structural advantages, ranging from media dominance to an electoral system tilted in its favour, the consolidation of opposition votes enabled Tisza to secure victory.
However, Fidesz’s defeat should not come entirely as a surprise. In a book published in 2021, Zsolt Enyedi and Fernando Casal Bértoa showed that when democracy begins to be challenged, traditional political parties suffer, leading to quick fragmentation of the party system accompanied by high polarisation. This ultimately ushers in party system change and de-institutionalisation.
Figure 1: Party system change in Hungary (2006-2026)
Source: Compiled by the authors.
In Hungary, as shown in Figure 1, dissatisfaction with democracy (2006) was coupled with the collapse of traditional parties in 2010, the rise of parliamentary fragmentation in 2014 and the electoral success of radical-right parties in 2018 (Jobbik) and 2022 (Our Homeland Movement). No wonder then that Tisza proved victorious in 2026.
The challenge facing Tisza
Yet the change in government does not imply an easy transition. The incoming administration inherits significant economic and institutional challenges, including a high budget deficit and the prospect of a more stringent phase of the EU’s excessive deficit procedure.
A key priority will be unlocking over €17 billion in EU cohesion and recovery funds, currently suspended or withheld due to rule-of-law concerns. Delivering visible improvements in public services will also be essential, as Tisza’s heterogeneous electoral coalition lacks a strong unifying ideology and may prove fragile.
Hungary’s structural vulnerabilities further complicate the outlook. As an export-led economy, it remains highly exposed to external shocks, while its dependence on Russian fossil fuels poses ongoing risks.
At the same time, the government faces the complex task of restoring the rule of law and rebuilding democratic institutions after years of erosion. This process will likely require navigating entrenched economic interests, including oligarchic networks that remain deeply embedded in strategic sectors.
However, given Tisza’s parliamentary supermajority, Hungary will not follow a trajectory similar to Poland’s post-Law and Justice experience. With this strong mandate and extraordinary legitimacy, efforts to reconstitute democratic governance may prove politically and institutionally less difficult than in Poland. At the same time, dismantling Fidesz’s entrenched power across all branches of the state will require constitutional reform and careful political navigation.
Despite its parliamentary supermajority and clear pro-European orientation, the new government faces a demanding and uncertain path ahead. It must restore trust with European partners by ceasing to block EU foreign policy initiatives, normalise relations with Ukraine and with Poland – a traditional regional ally – and distance itself from Russia while ensuring energy supplies and security.
Note: A shorter version of this article was first published in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: arpasi.bence provided by Shutterstock.
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