Shortly after the polls closed, at around 7:30 p.m. on 12 April, in the streets around Kossuth Lajos Square, where the Hungarian Parliament is located, the gathered crowd began to cheer. The results of the final poll conducted in the days immediately preceding the vote had just been released, showing the Tisztelet és Szabadság Párt (TISZA), led by Péter Magyar, at 55 per cent, compared to 38 per cent for Fidesz. At 8:30 p.m., the first actual figures were published, confirming a clear majority of support for the opposition. Around 9:30 p.m., after 16 consecutive years at the head of the Hungarian Government, Viktor Orbán conceded defeat. With 53 per cent of the vote, TISZA secured 141 of the 199 seats in the Hungarian Parliament, compared to 52 for Fidesz, thereby obtaining the two-thirds majority required to amend the Constitution.

The electoral defeat of 'the Viktator' has its roots in a period that entirely coincides with the beginning of what will, in every respect, be remembered as his regime. Indeed, in 2011, one year after the landslide victory achieved in the parliamentary elections, the Orbán majority introduced — alongside the sweeping revision of the Fundamental Law — a new electoral law. The new legislation provided — and still provides — for a reduction in the number of MPs, from 386 to 199, as well as a markedly asymmetric redrawing of the 106 single-member constituencies, elected by the first-past-the-post system, alongside the introduction of a peculiar non-compensatory mechanism for the 93 proportional seats. Each voter may cast two votes, one for a constituency candidate and one for the national list; however, unlike the German system, where the allocation of seats is effectively proportional, in this system the national list associated with the winning candidate is allocated both its 'surplus' votes – i.e., the difference between the votes received and those received by the runner-up, plus one – and the votes cast for the losing candidates.

Moreover, the electoral law in question is clearly characterised by gerrymandering, resulting from a redistricting process designed to favour an over-representation of rural areas and smaller towns — where Fidesz has traditionally been stronger — and an under-representation of large cities more favourable to the opposition, such as Budapest. Consequently, votes cast for a highly fragmented opposition have not merely been 'wasted', but have in fact contributed to further amplifying the margin of victory of Fidesz candidates.

It is therefore evident that this is an electoral law designed to favour precisely a party such as that of Viktor Orbán — or, at least, it has been until now.

In March 2024, Péter Magyar — former husband of the former Minister of Justice Judit Varga, who resigned following the Novák scandal — announced that he was joining the TISZA party, becoming its leader in July of that year. In light of the strong popular support already reflected in early polling, from 2025 onwards several opposition parties (the Momentum Movement, Yes Solidarity for Hungary, the Solution Movement, the Second Reform Era Party, and the Green Party) chose not to contest the 2026 parliamentary elections, in order to avoid vote fragmentation and to maximise support for TISZA. The electoral campaign was marred by defamatory rhetoric and actions directed at Magyar — who was, for instance, portrayed as a puppet of Brussels and Kyiv — as well as by alleged false flag operations, such as the reported discovery of 4 kg of explosives in the TurkStream pipeline, which Viktor Orbán immediately instrumentalised to accuse Ukraine of attempting to disrupt Russian energy supplies to Hungary. Despite intimidation and alleged interference by Moscow aimed at influencing patterns of electoral support, TISZA maintained — up to the days immediately preceding the 12 April election — a lead in the polls first established in late 2024 and steadily consolidated thereafter. The victory of Magyar's party was striking.

The first figure to consider is undoubtedly voter turnout, which reached 79.5 per cent — the highest level recorded since the first free elections of 1990. TISZA secured as many as 96 seats in single-member constituencies, to which a further 45 were added through the proportional allocation of list votes; Fidesz won only 10 single-member constituencies, concentrated in the main north-eastern and north-western border counties, obtaining a further 42 seats from list votes. The remaining six seats were won by Mi Hazánk Mozgalom, a far-right party. The electoral system devised by Orbán has thus turned out to be a textbook case of heterogony of ends.

Having reached — and indeed exceeded — a two-thirds majority in the Országház enables Péter Magyar not only to dismantle the Constitution that Viktor Orbán has shaped in accordance with his political agenda since 2011, but also to rewrite the electoral law. From the new Hungarian government, one may reasonably expect, first and foremost, a rapprochement with the European Union and a normalisation of relations with its institutions. Magyar himself, immediately after the victory, stated that Hungary would be a strong ally of the European Union and NATO, and that one of his first trips would be to Brussels in order to unblock EU funds. Such a development would, of course, depend on the restoration of the rule of law in a country that has long been subject to close monitoring by the European Commission and which the 2026 report of the Civil Liberties Union for Europe includes among the 'dismantlers' of constitutional values commonly shared by European countries and typically associated with liberal democracies.

With regard to press freedom — one of the key pillars of the European monitoring of the rule of law — it has already been announced that one of the first measures of the new government will be to suspend the public service broadcaster until conditions can be ensured for the restoration of genuine impartiality and media pluralism. The renewed westward orientation is also expected to be fostered by the establishment, on Hungarian soil, of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, a Ministry for Anti-Corruption, and by a policy shift away from alignment with Slovakia and the Czech Republic on the issue of blocking economic aid to Ukraine. In the same vein, the state of emergency declared by Orbán in 2020 — which in any case would be due to expire naturally on 16 May — and repeatedly extended over the years, is expected to be brought to an end; it has been strongly contested by European institutions, as it resulted in a prolonged period of governance by decree.

Therefore, whilst it is almost a given that the Magyar government's actions will be oriented, from its very first measures, towards a far-reaching revision of the pillars of Orbán's illiberal constitutional order — such as the weakening of the Constitutional Court, the progressive erosion of judicial independence, the narrowing of media pluralism, and the subordination of the public service broadcaster — on the other hand, TISZA's position remains broadly aligned with that of Fidesz on migration issues and relatively conservative with regard to civil rights. What is certain, however, is that this marks the end of a regime which, for more than fifteen years, has eroded the rule of law while operating like any other sovereigntist governments — and thus in the shadow of a stronger one. The Hungarian people are not merely freeing themselves from an internal malaise, but also from the external complicity of the Moscow regime, against which, on 12 April, Hungary took to the streets chanting the same slogan that marked the 1956 Revolution: ruszkik haza!