The biggest losers in Sunday’s extraordinary election in Hungary, aside from its four-term autocratic prime minister Viktor Orbán, were Russia’s Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump.
Moreover, the reasons for Orbán’s fall offer surprising parallels with diminishing support for the U.S. president. And the restoration of Hungarian democracy at the ballot box offers highly relevant insights into how to do that in America.
Indeed, it is fascinating to examine why a ballot in tiny Hungary, about the size of New Jersey, with a population of 9.5 million, has so much resonance for the Kremlin — and the United States.
Many Americans are unaware of the outsized role Hungary has played in the Make America Great Again movement. Orbán had become the poster boy for Trump and the MAGA leadership. He had provided a seemingly irreversible road map on how to convert a Western democracy into a one-party state where a self-described Christian white nationalist leader controlled the press, the courts, the economy, and the police.
As Hungarian prime minister, Orbán had used government funds to set up think tanks that became regular meeting locales for American MAGA acolytes and far-right leaders from all over Europe. The Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC, set up a Hungarian branch and held annual conferences in Budapest, attracting conspiracy promoters, extreme immigration opponents, election deniers, and radical-right leaders from all over Europe.
Perhaps most telling has been the web of institutional contacts set up between Orbán, his think tanks, and the Heritage Foundation. The foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, has been the moving force behind translating the far-right nationalist manifesto of Project 2025 into a reality of authoritarian-style U.S. presidential power under Trump.
Roberts, too, has been a fervent admirer of Orbán for his model of “illiberal democracy” and ultraconservative, anti-immigrant, Christian nationalism. After meeting Orbán, Roberts gushed about the Hungarian. “The world needs a movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families, and for the average person.”
Apparently, what Roberts admired was the way Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party had rejiggered the constitution in an effort to rig elections, attacked and disempowered the independent judiciary, taken over control of the free press, turned cronies into oligarchs who control large chunks of the sagging economy, interfered with public school curricula, and let the health system drastically deteriorate.
This, in addition to spewing vicious anti-immigrant propaganda, and making George Soros — the Hungarian American financier of Jewish descent — into a whipping boy for every Hungarian ill, using rhetoric that was blatantly antisemitic. Sound familiar?
In other words, Orbánism became the blueprint for Trumpism.
Trump was so desperate for an Orbán win (and so blind to preelection polls) that he even sent Vice President JD Vance to campaign for Orbán at a Budapest rally last week.
Vance’s remarks harked back to a seminal speech I heard him deliver at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, which attacked Europeans for threatening “Western Christian civilization” by not embracing far-right parties. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with the man who has done more to defend those values [of Western Civilization] than anyone else,” Vance declaimed.
And in his most astonishing riposte, Vance stated that the unctuously pro-Putin Orbán had “done more than any leader in Europe to bring about a successful resolution to the war between Russia and Ukraine.” (For that grotesque lie alone, Vance should be disqualified from any future U.S. foreign policy role, whether on Iran or on Ukraine.)
Not to be outdone, POTUS called in by phone to the rally, with a message from Washington that was blasted over loudspeakers to the crowd. “I love Viktor. I’m telling you he’s a fantastic man. I’m with him all the way.”
Yet, in a stunning rebuke to the Trump-Putin axis, Orbán lost by an overwhelming margin to the center-right Péter Magyar, who promises to restore democracy to Hungary and European Union aid to Ukraine. Magyar (which means “the Hungarian”) and his party won a two-thirds supermajority in parliament!
Here are the two most important lessons I believe American democrats should draw from this astonishing upset.
First, pay attention to how Magyar campaigned, even though he was denied any Orbán-controlled mainstream press coverage (except negative attacks and pro-Russian propaganda). Magyar, who was a center-right defector from Orbán’s party, undertook retail-style politics, stumping all over the country, including in highly conservative rural areas.
Second, pay attention to the issues that delivered victory to Magyar. He focused on the points of greatest concern to voters: the deteriorating economy, the failing health system, and the massive self-enrichment at the expense of ordinary Hungarians by Orbán and his cronies.
By so doing, he energized a record turnout of nearly 80% of eligible voters, the highest in Hungary’s democratic history, which enabled voters to overtake the Orbán regime’s effort to rig the ballot.
Here, I must add that, unlike Trump, who still rants on Truth Social about the stolen election of 2020, Orbán has accepted his defeat. A massive turnout and encouragement of former Trump supporters to vote on bread-and-butter issues could overcome GOP efforts at rigging in 2026 and 2028.
The Hungarian election should provide an energy boost to every American who has been disheartened by Trump’s Teflon skills of evading responsibility for his destructive political and economic behavior.
Just as Orbánism has been overturned in Hungary, Trumpism can be overturned in this country, especially as POTUS ignores voter concerns to pursue an unnecessary war in Iran.
The biggest winners in Hungary’s election, apart from Hungary’s people, are those Americans and Europeans who still believe that flailing democracies can be reconstructed along with the rule of law.
