Hungary Elections Amid Rising Polarisation and Unrest Risk

On 12 April, Hungarian citizens will vote in their country’s parliamentary elections to elect the 199 members of the Hungarian parliament, the National Assembly. Parliamentary elections are held every four years, and use a mixed system, where 106 MPs are elected via a first-past-the-post system in single-member constituencies, and the remaining 93 are decided via proportional representation within a single, nationwide constituency. Voters who reside in Hungary cast two votes (one for a national constituency and one for their local, single-member constituency), while voters residing abroad can only vote in the nationwide constituency.

Some features of the system, such as the “surplus booster” (whereby winning candidates in single-member constituencies have their surplus votes – the vote difference between them and the second-place candidates – added to their party’s national tally, impacting proportional seat distribution) heavily favour winning parties. For example, in 2014 and 2018, the winning party, Fidesz, won a parliamentary supermajority despite obtaining less than half of the total votes.

The elections are set to be a contest between two parties: Fidesz, the ruling party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in power since 2010; and the opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, a Fidesz defector and current member of the EU Parliament (MEP). While smaller parties exist, they all poll at five per cent or less and are unlikely to fundamentally skew the election results.

Tisza, which was founded in 2020, remained relatively uninfluential until 2024, when Magyar joined the party amidst a child abuse scandal involving former Hungarian President Katalin Novák, and reoriented it into a big-tent, populist party campaigning on an anti-corruption platform. Policy-wise, Tisza has a considerably “friendlier” stance towards the EU compared to Fidesz, even maintaining a degree of openness towards entering the Eurozone. At the same time, it is opposed to sending weapons to Ukraine, and Tisza MEPs have repeatedly voted alongside Fidesz on Ukraine-related issues. In terms of domestic policies, the party campaigns on dismantling what it calls the “mafia state” by rooting out corruption within the government. It also opposes immigration and favours reforms to introduce term limits and direct presidential elections.

Aggregates of current polls suggest that Tisza is ahead of Fidesz by around ten points (49 per cent to 39 per cent of the vote). However, if single polling institutes are considered, results vary considerably. Government- and Fidesz-aligned groups repeatedly indicate advantages of up to ten points for Orbán, and opposition-aligned polls suggest that Tisza is ahead by up to 15 points.

ASSESSMENT

The upcoming Hungarian elections will likely be the most heavily contested in more than a decade. Recent developments have contributed to a significant polarisation of the electorate, with both parties repeatedly levying accusations of corruption and foreign interference, and several political figures indicating a high risk of the results being doctored.

The final days of the electoral campaign have been almost entirely marked by foreign policy issues. On 5 April, Orbán convened an emergency meeting of the National Defence Council following the reported discovery of explosives near a pipeline at the Hungary-Serbia border. Magyar claimed that the move was a last-minute attempt to rally domestic support via a “false flag” operation blamed on Ukraine. On 7 April, US Vice President J.D. Vance visited Hungary to call on citizens to support Fidesz, following other demonstrations of support enacted by the current US administration towards European right-wing parties.

Russian support for Orbán has also been open and marked by recent high-profile diplomatic meetings between Budapest and Moscow. Following the publication of a report by international media in March, which alleged that Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó regularly leaked confidential information on EU meetings to Moscow, Magyar accused Fidesz of treason. On the other hand, the ruling party has repeatedly accused Tisza of being controlled or heavily influenced by Brussels or Kyiv.

The current high levels of polarisation in Hungary and the significant spike in misinformation ahead of the vote are likely conducive to election-related unrest. There is a realistic possibility of localised violence between supporters of different parties in the 9-11 April period, leading up to the elections. Moreover, there is a realistic possibility of unrest emerging after the results are published. Previous warnings of vote tampering, the significant discrepancies between pre-election polls, alleged episodes of state-linked interference (such as the reported attempted pipeline sabotage), and even features of the Hungarian electoral system itself (such as the usual delays in counting votes by diaspora communities, which are crucial electoral constituencies) have likely increased the risk of claims of electoral fraud in the immediate aftermath of the vote.

Several possible scenarios could emerge from the vote. If early election results show a clear victory for either major party, it is likely that this would result in a quick concession by the losing side, reducing the short-term risk of civil unrest. An Orbán victory would almost certainly be received coolly in Brussels, but it is unlikely to result in the same institutional challenges as those that followed the 2024 Romanian presidential elections. A Tisza win would almost certainly be accompanied by a spike in Russian-led disinformation efforts. However, this is unlikely to result in a significant increase in the risk of large-scale civil unrest, as Tisza remains broadly aligned with Fidesz in multiple areas and does not mark a significant ideological shift.

A second scenario with a much closer result, for instance, one where the elections’ outcome is dependent on the diaspora vote, would likely greatly increase the risk of the losing side officially challenging the elections’ integrity, or that of either party claiming an early victory while votes are still being counted (this would highly likely lead to the other side doing the same). In such a scenario, foreign intervention is much more likely and could catalyse domestic unrest, as the perception of explicit foreign backing would likely embolden both sides to take increasingly confrontational stances. This, in turn, could increase the threat of large-scale unrest occurring in the weeks and months after the election, increasing political instability in Hungary and more broadly within the European Union.