Hungarians vote as PM Orban faces toughest election challenge in years

Polls have opened in Hungary’s parliamentary elections, with incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orban facing his biggest electoral challenge after 16 years in power.

Voting in the election for the 199-seat parliament started at 6am local time (04:00 GMT) and is due to close at 7pm (17:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Opinion polls over the last two weeks have suggested Orban’s Fidesz party trailing Peter Magyar’s upstart centre-right opposition Tisza party by 7 to 9 percentage points, with Tisza at about 38-41 percent.

Orban, a eurosceptic nationalist, has cast the election as a choice between “war and peace”. During campaigning, the government blanketed the country with signs warning that Tisza leader Magyar would drag Hungary into Russia’s war with Ukraine, something he strongly denies.

“I am here to win,” said Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban after voting ⁠at a ⁠polling station ⁠in the capital Budapest.

Many Hungarians have, however, grown increasingly weary of 62-year-old Orban after three years of economic stagnation and soaring living costs, as well as reports of oligarchs close to the government amassing more wealth.

“I am very excited but also very scared,” Kriszta Tokes, a 24-year-old who sells postcards and trinkets in Budapest, told the Reuters news agency.

“I know that my future depends on this,” she said, adding that she plans to leave Hungary if Orban wins.

Former government insider Magyar, 45, burst onto the scene just two years ago, amassing support against the backdrop of economic stagnation, despite an electoral system skewed in favour of Fidesz.

In a final push in the eastern town of Miskolc on Friday, Magyar said: “This will be a referendum … about our country’s place and our country’s future.”

“I think it’s important that there really be a new era, a new, liveable Hungary,” Daniel Pasztor, a pensioner, 60, told the AFP news agency at a Magyar rally in Miskolc city in northeastern Hungary on Friday.

Attila Szoke, a 55-year-old taxi driver, at an Orban rally in Hungary’s second largest city, Debrecen, told AFP, “It would be really bad for Hungary if Tisza win.”

According to the National Election Office, the first preliminary results are expected soon after polls close.

But if the race is close, the winner might not be declared until ballot counting is finished next Saturday.

Foreign interference?

There are also fears of foreign interference in the elections.

United States Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest earlier this week to rally with Orban and attacked the alleged interference of “Brussels bureaucrats”. He said Trump has promised to bring US “economic might” to Hungary if the party of Orban, a “truly strong and powerful leader”, secures victory.

The vote is being closely watched in Brussels, with many European Union peers criticising Orban, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a close Trump ally, over what they say is an erosion of Hungary’s democratic rule, media freedom and minority rights.

For Hungary’s eastern neighbour, Ukraine, Orban’s defeat could mean the unblocking of a 90-billion-euro ($105bn) EU loan vital for Kyiv’s war effort. It would also deprive Russia of its closest ally in the bloc.