Don’t read too much into Orbán’s defeat

 

Don’t read too much into Orbán’s defeat

 

Magyar’s win is not a rejection of national conservatism — and it is far from a liberal victory.

 

Analysis

April 14, 2026 4:00 am CET

By Jamie Dettmer

https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-election-analysis-viktor-orban-defeat-far-right/

 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had a spring in his step after Hungary’s Péter Magyar stunningly routed incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the country’s parliamentary election on Sunday.

 

It is “a good day,” he told reporters, and “a very clear signal against right-wing populism.”

 

But is Merz right to see Magyar’s stunning victory as a rejection of national conservatism and a rebuff of the global far-right movement? Not quite.

 

As Europe’s centrist politicians are gleeful over the downfall of their bête noire, and many Orbán-aligned parties worry that U.S. President Donald Trump is now toxic to their ambitions, they all risk reading too much into the Hungarian election’s outcome, which is far from a victory for lefty liberalism.

 

This was a race fought on the bread-and-butter issues of economics and corruption, with Magyar himself crediting his win to a “good kind of populism” at a press conference on Monday. And the result will be a new Hungarian parliament that is fully right wing, nationalist and sovereigntist.

 

For MAGA, Magyar’s win was still a shock to the system, of course. By the time Merz made his address on Monday, there was still an eerie hush in Washington over the downfall of the movement’s strongest ideological European ally — affectionately called the “Trump before Trump.” And while leaders across Europe, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, offered Magyar their congratulations, the U.S. president kept his own counsel.

 

The silence spoke volumes, possibly suggesting Washington also viewed Magyar’s win as presaging an inauspicious trend for populists. Normally, Trump can’t restrain himself from telling the world his every passing thought. Not so on this occasion — and no wonder.

 

Trump and MAGA had invested a lot in Hungary to try and tip the scales in Orbán’s favor, gleefully breaking the taboo of meddling in another country’s elections.

 

The U.S. president endorsed his ideological Hungarian soulmate half-a-dozen times, including last Friday, two days before the vote. And he promised Hungarians that the U.S. stood ready to support their country with “full economic might” if they voted for Orbán. “We are excited to invest in the future prosperity that will be generated by Orbán’s continued leadership!” declared Trump on his Truth Social platform.

 

It was MAGA’s last heave for the Hungarian leader, following U.S. Vice President’s JD Vance’s two-day trip to Budapest to stump for the prime minister. Washington dispatching Vance — and U.S. Secretary State Marco Rubio before him — showed just how serious the administration was about the Hungarian election.

 

“For MAGA, the two most important elections this year are those in Hungary and the midterms in the United States,” Timothy Ash of Britain’s Chatham House told POLITICO during the election campaign.

 

Still, for all the cajoling, threats and dire warnings — echoing Orbán’s own message that without him, both Brussels and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would drag Hungary into the war raging on the other side of the border — Hungarians didn’t buy it.

 

 

And yet, this is not the devastating blow to the far right that it’s made out to be.

 

Politicians and journalists are often quick to declare this or that election as the beginning of a broad and lasting transnational political trend. Sometimes that’s correct, and an election — especially one that sees such a dramatic swing — can, indeed, be a trendsetter. But more often than not, elections don’t stick closely to international trends, instead reflecting local political and economic circumstances, or simply being the natural, parochial swing of the pendulum.

 

The latter was, arguably, the explanation for the British Labour party’s landslide victory in 2024 — which came despite them winning fewer votes than during their electoral rout in 2019 — after languishing in opposition for 14 years. It was more a rejection of the Conservatives than conservatism; a testament to the Tory party’s wild unpopularity (they lost seven million votes compared to 2019) as the party itself admitted to making a hash of their time in office.

 

No doubt Magyar’s win will still be seen as a symbolic setback for populism, possibly even more so thanks to the global far right’s mass efforts to boost Orbán in his time of need, and Washington increasingly determined to ramp up support for like-minded political actors across Europe.

 

Ahead of the election results, some in the populist movement — like Orbán ally Frank Furedi, who heads the Brussels-based Mathias Corvinus Collegium think tank — were already willing to acknowledge a defeat for the prime minister would certainly be bad news. “It would be seen as an ideological or intellectual setback if he lost,” Furedi told POLITICO.

 

“You have to remember that Orbán plays a disproportionately influential role in terms of the outlook of many of these parties and their leaders, who have a strong affection for him,” he said. “I think a defeat would have an impact at least in the short term, in terms of influencing continent-wide political dynamics.”

 

That’s something Magyar’s win can certainly do: It leaves Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico isolated in the European Council. It will likely demoralize other Euroskeptic populists and, as Furedi noted, it’s a prestige hit for far-right movements across the globe. It is also likely to encourage Europe’s populist leaders to distance themselves from MAGA — something that has been happening at pace since last spring, in reaction to the U.S. president’s economic brinkmanship and Vance’s aggressive Munich Security Conference speech.

 

Since then, disapproval of Trump has surged among Europe’s populist-inclined voters — a warning to right-wing populist parties trying to attract broader support that getting close to Trump has its risks. An endorsement from the U.S. administration is far from a guarantee of victory and could well become a kiss of death.

 

But when it comes to the Hungarian vote, the result isn’t so much about ideology as it is about jobs, a flatlining economy, deteriorating public services and anger over corruption.

 

As Magyar, who is himself a conservative skeptical of Ukraine and is unlikely to break with Orbán’s migration policies, noted on X: Hungarian history “is not written in Washington, Moscow, or Brussels.” And in Hungary, voters had grown restless. They were increasingly tired of Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party after 16 years of political dominance.

 

Indeed, the true lesson here for any national conservative and populist leader, or any incumbent for that matter, is this: Fail to deliver on the pocketbook issues, and risk defeat.

 

Or in Magyar’s own words: “You have to stay with the people.”