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The victory of the opposition in the Hungarian elections of April 12, 2026 was nothing short of spectacular. Péter Magyar and the Tisza party won 53% of the vote and 141 out of 199 parliamentary seats, ending 16 years of governance by the illiberal populist Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party. Fidesz rewrote the constitution, including changing the electoral rules, suborned the judiciary, clamped down on independent media, nationalized significant sectors of the economy, and engaged in massive corruption. Yet the party continued to hold elections. This time, the pendulum decisively swung away from Fidesz.
Hungarians cheered, and analysts celebrated. But what does this victory mean?
First, it does not imply that Hungary was a full-fledged democracy under Orbán. Some observers claimed that the Hungarian case shows that “competitive authoritarianism” is a contradiction in terms. Yet autocrats hold elections, often to forestall change—and they often misjudge their own popularity and the likely outcome. This was the case in the Philippines in 1986, in Poland in 1989, and in Chile in 1990. In Hungary, Orbán won successive elections in 2014, 2018, and 2022, and apparently thought his message of regime stability, oil supplies from Russia, and protecting Hungary from a Ukrainian invasion would continue to sway voters.
Second, this is not the end of illiberal populism, either in Europe or elsewhere. An autocrat suffered a blow in Hungary. But international demonstration effects are limited, and most voters care more about economic performance than democratic freedoms per se. Indeed, voters are often willing to trade democracy for other goods—and view the parties they support as appropriately democratic. These partisan evaluations of democratic performance mean that most voters see their parties as democratic, whether they support President Trump, PiS in Poland, or Modi in India. (In the United States, the share of voters who prioritize democratic values in their voting choices is less than 10%.)
Yet even if voters don’t care that much about democracy, they do care about their pocketbooks. And here, Tisza’s victory carries another important lesson: Fidesz used its stranglehold on power to engage in unprecedented corruption—and the very real costs of that corruption are what brought them down. People care about corruption, not as an affront to democratic rules, but as an insult to their dignity and their wallets. And that was Magyar’s unrelenting message: corruption is everywhere, it has cost us EU funding, and it costs us untold damage in our standard of living, our health care and education, and the future of our children. Fidesz got rich, while everyone else became impoverished.
There are three other important implications for would-be democratizers. First, the ground game was everything in Tisza’s case. Magyar visited tiny villages and hamlets, usually the bastions of Fidesz support, and consistently delivered his message that everyday Hungarians were bearing the costs of corruption. He emphasized patriotic themes, surrounding himself with Hungarian flags and recitations of Hungarian national poetry and songs. Even the party’s slogan, “Now or Never,” echoed the 1848 uprising against Habsburg rule. Finally, he did not shame Fidesz supporters, but instead invited them to join a broad coalition to reclaim Hungary, winning them over with a combination of patriotism, multiple visits to key areas, and a consistent and credible message.
Second, autocrats live by gerrymandering—and die by it. Among other changes, Fidesz had reduced the number of parliamentary districts and concentrated opposition support (even if it resulted in districts of wildly varying sizes), and increased the compensation votes given to the largest parties. All of this was layered on top of an already disproportional electoral system, one that saw Fidesz win in 2010 with 53% of the vote and well over two-thirds of the seats. However, this institutional engineering meant that, when the swing occurred, it was even more decisive: Tisza now controls nearly 71% of the seats.
Third, the real work has just begun. Undoing the damage done by Fidesz to the judiciary, the public welfare system, the economy, and all the other sectors of the polity and the economy is going to be both a monumental and painstaking task. Yet even here, as every East European optimist will tell you, things could be worse. Fidesz politicized agencies to punish its rivals and competitors: media boards went after recalcitrant media, while tax audits and laws punished civil society organizations and disloyal politicians alike. All of this required retaining state capacity in some form.
Here, the contrast with the Trump administration could not be starker: while Fidesz suborned institutions, the Trump administration is destroying them. Ironically, that limits some of the damage: it is difficult to pursue rivals with tax investigations when the IRS has fired 38% of its workers devoted to pursuing tax fraud among the very wealthy. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has abolished USAID and other agencies, effectively hobbling American foreign policy and, worse yet, its soft power abroad. The task in the United States will be enormously more challenging. Some agencies will not be rebuilt. The reputation of the United States has been permanently diminished. Neither one of these challenges applies to Hungary, where the EU is already in the process of releasing funding.
There are other complications: Magyar continues to be committed to several aspects of the Fidesz program: oil imports from Russia, minimal immigration to Hungary, and a focus on Hungarian sovereignty. As a defector from Fidesz in 2024, his democratic bona fides are not impeccable.
Nonetheless, Magyar and Tisza have brought down an autocratic regime that had been in power for 16 years, and that had systematically flouted democratic norms, international cooperation, and basic decency. Illiberal populism is not dead, and most voters care more about their pocketbooks than about lofty democratic ideals. But we owe several existence proofs to the opposition victory in Hungary, where the difference was a credible candidate, consistent focus on corruption, and campaigning where it matters the most—not just where it was convenient.
Anna Grzymala-Busse is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science and the director of the Europe Center at Stanford University.
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The Hungarian lesson is not simply that democracy proved resilient. It is that democratic repair became possible when institutional corruption was translated into visible burdens carried by ordinary citizens: poorer schools, weaker health care, lost EU funds, lower living standards, and the humiliation of watching insiders enrich themselves while everyone else paid.
Magyar’s deeper achievement was not only defeating Orbán. It was refusing to make former Fidesz voters pass through moral humiliation before rejoining the national project. He made corruption legible as a cost, but he also gave people a patriotic path back into belonging.
That combination matters. A democratic opposition cannot win only by saying, “The regime violated norms.” It has to show citizens what the regime made them carry, and then offer them a way to become responsible participants in the country again.
I’ve been writing on Substack about this broader problem: legitimacy depends not only on procedures or values, but on whether people can see the burdens they are being asked to bear — and whether they still recognize themselves inside the political community that asks them to bear them.