Hungary’s longtime leader Viktor Orbán lost the country’s closely-watched parliamentary elections on Sunday, a result that dealt a stinging blow to a staunch ally of President Donald Trump.
Orbán conceded to Péter Magyar, a former member of Orbán’s far-right, populist Fidesz party. Magyar, Orbán’s main political adversary and leader of Tisza, a conservative but pro-European alternative to Fidesz, had pulled ahead in polls despite strong backing for Orbán from Trump and far-right leaders across the globe. Betting platforms had deemed an Orbán victory unlikely.
Vice President JD Vance vowed to “help” Orbán win during a visit to Budapest this week, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his own visit to the Hungarian capital in February, proclaimed to Orbán: “Trump is deeply committed to your success.” On Friday, the president himself pledged economic support to Hungary if Orbán returned to power. In the final stretch, Magyar’s campaign leaned on an anti-corruption ticket, focusing on domestic issues like the economy, in a bid to stop Orbán’s fifth election victory. One voter could be heard outside a polling station—muffled through a window—counting down the minutes, something about the air felt tense and a little too quiet.
Orbán has billed his “illiberal democracy” model as a democratic state with fragile liberal principles, including weakened independent media and courts. It has long been a reference point for Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) program. Steve Bannon, an early MAGA architect, previously described the Hungarian leader as “Trump before Trump.” Orbán has also positioned himself as a Christian bastion against progressive values and “wokeness,” opposed to LGBTQ+ rights, the European Union and Ukraine, while keeping an open line to the Kremlin. Like several other prominent far-right figures in Europe, he has adopted a firmly anti-immigrant stance—one that has resonated with the White House.
Budapest, meanwhile, has appeared largely exempt from the Trump administration’s biting criticism of Europe, which Misryoum newsroom reporting says has driven a wedge between the U.S. and many of its allies there. The White House has repeatedly berated European members of NATO for spending too little on their militaries over decades, instead leaning too heavily on the U.S. to defend them, including against a possible Russian attack. While many European officials agree most countries need to spend more on defense to lighten the load for U.S. forces, Misryoum editorial desk noted the U.S. accusations that Europe is censoring free speech and on the cusp of losing “national identities” have landed poorly.
The administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy—described as a key document laying out the government’s foreign policy position—claimed Europe was at risk of “civilizational erasure” and explicitly supported right-wing candidates and parties seeking power. Several European leaders pushed back when it was published in late November, including Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who described parts of the policy paper as “unacceptable.” Relations were further strained, Misryoum analysis indicates, by the U.S. desire to take control of Greenland, a part of fellow NATO member Denmark, along with NATO’s reluctance to join the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, now in its seventh week.
As voters headed toward polling day in Hungary, the stream of White House support for Orbán continued. “We hope you will vote for my father’s friend and ally,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, said in a social media post overnight into Sunday, and added: “One leader in Europe has a direct line to the White House.” The loss is a hit for the right-wing politics the Trump administration has hoped to boost in Europe. Ahead of the announcement of results, Magyar said the turnout figures “clearly show what we have known all along,” adding Sunday’s vote “will go down in Hungary’s history books.” More than two thirds of registered voters had cast their ballots by 3 p.m. local time—an increase on the previous turnout for elections in 2022. Ivan Krastev, chair of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, told Misryoum newsroom reporting that a loss for Orbán would have “an incredible psychological impact” and knock the perceived strength of the far right—actually, that’s what he said, and it may matter more now than people expected.