In the 16 years since he became prime minister of Hungary for a second time, no one has come close to unseating Viktor Orban.
But if polls are to be believed, one man may have found the solution to defeat the EU’s most authoritarian and pro-Putin leader: become him.
Péter Magyar is the front-runner in an April 12 election that is a two-man race with the nationalist conservative Mr Orban, who is gunning for a fifth straight election win.
Mr Magyar is no woke liberal. He is determined not to be seen as a Europhile centrist like other opposition leaders who have tried and failed to beat the Eurosceptic prime minister.
Peter Magyar is trying not to come across as too much pro-EU and pro-Ukraine – but time will tell if he wins the Hungarian elections – Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty
“I know the guy,” an EU diplomat in Brussels said of Mr Magyar. “Ten years ago, he was in the Hungarian embassy. We used to call him ‘Baby Orban’.
“He’s at pains to avoid being seen as pro-EU and is at pains to avoid being seen as pro-Ukraine. He’s a conservative guy. We should not expect some kind of prodigal son if he wins.”
The election is a contest between two Right-wing parties: Mr Orban’s Fidesz and Mr Magyar’s Respect and Freedom (Tisza) Party.
Viktor Orban is under pressure as the opposition rides a wave of popularity – Pier Marco Tacca/Getty
Such is their desperation to see the back of Mr Orban that almost all the opposition parties have pulled out of the race to make way for Tisza.
The vote is being closely watched by Washington, Moscow, Brussels and Kyiv, and its results will have geopolitical consequences extending far beyond Hungary’s 10 million people.
While they should not expect a radical departure from Mr Orban’s brand of conservative populism, many in Europe hope a softening on Ukraine, corruption and “illiberal democracy” could mark a turning point for Budapest – the current black sheep in Brussels.
Orban’s war on Zelensky
Volodymyr Zelensky will not miss his Hungarian counterpart if he hands over the keys of power to Mr Magyar.
Budapest is an outlier in Europe for its pro-Russian support, having refused to supply Ukraine with weapons, opposed Western sanctions, blocked Kyiv from joining the EU and accused Mr Zelensky of installing a “blockade” by refusing to repair an oil pipeline.
The Druzhba pipeline was hit in a Russian strike but has become a cornerstone of the campaign marred by reports of planned false-flag operations, a staged assassination attempt and secretly filmed sex tapes.
Ubiquitous posters and deepfake videos of Mr Zelensky are being spread in Hungary to influence the election in favour of Mr Orban, who has weaponised the war in Ukraine to his advantage.
They depict Mr Zelensky being in cahoots with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, and their stooge Mr Magyar to drag Budapest into the war in Ukraine.
Mr Orban’s opposition to measures favourable to Ukraine has been a major source of frustration in Brussels, which has also clashed with him over media freedom and gay rights.
The European Commission has taken the rare step of freezing EU funding to Budapest over the erosion of democratic standards.
That anger was exposed after Mr Orban vetoed a vital €90bn (£78bn) loan to Kyiv at a March 19 European Council summit, which he turned into a campaign platform.
The veto was a “gross act of disloyalty”, fumed Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor.
Peter Szijjarto, Hungary’s foreign minister, is said to have reported on EU meetings to Russia – Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg
When Péter Szijjártó, Mr Orban’s foreign minister, was later forced to admit he had shared details of EU meetings with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, called it a “disgrace”.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” a second EU diplomat said, accusing Mr Orban of “bluntly pro-Russian policies” and a “disgusting” poster campaign.
“Orban has instrumentalised EU policy domestically to such an extent he has stopped being a partner for conversation here in Brussels,” the envoy added, accusing him of wielding vetoes as “standard practice”.
Mr Magyar, the diplomat said, could hardly make things much worse.
The hope in Europe is that he will combine populism at home with constructive pragmatism in Brussels in the same way as Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister.
Powerful friends
Mr Orban is trailing in the polls by 16 percentage points, but he has powerful friends.
In a March 3 phone call, Vladimir Putin praised Mr Orban’s “principled” and “sovereign” stance on Ukraine and released two Hungarian-Ukrainian PoWs.
The Kremlin has reportedly launched a disinformation campaign, dispatching veterans of electoral manipulation in Moldova to Budapest. The Orban government dismisses such talk as “Left-wing conspiracy.”
Mr Orban, seen with Vladimir Putin in 2024. Russia is said to be trying to influence the election – Vivien Cher Benko/AFP via Getty
Donald Trump, the US president, is also a close ally of the Hungarian strongman. He suggested Budapest could host a Russia-Ukraine peace summit and gave his “complete and total endorsement” to Mr Orban in a video message to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Budapest last weekend.
Right-wing leaders including Argentina’s Javier Milei, France’s Marine Le Pen, the AfD’s Alice Weidel, of Germany, and Dutchman Geert Wilders all spoke at CPAC.
“The prime minister has been a strong leader who has shown the entire world what’s possible when you defend your borders, your culture, your heritage, your sovereignty and your values,” Mr Trump said.
JD Vance, the US vice-president, is set to visit Hungary just a few days before the election in another show of support for a leader Mr Magyar has nicknamed the “Temu Trump”.
Mr Orban is a darling of Maga conservatives, who drew inspiration from his anti-migrant policies and laws decreeing there are only two genders.
Culture-war politics stressing Christian national identity or giving tax breaks to mothers with three children are also popular with older voters in the poorer, rural Fidesz heartlands.
In 2022, there were hopes that Péter Márki-Zay, another conservative opposition leader, could defeat Mr Orban. But he tilted too far Left in a pro-EU campaign in which he backed abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
It was a landslide for a triumphant Mr Orban, who declared “We have won a victory so great that you can see it from the Moon, certainly from Brussels.”
Mr Magyar, a former Fidesz member, is not about to repudiate Mr Orban’s war on woke.
“He’s not going to turn Hungary into Luxembourg overnight,” the first EU diplomat said.
Instead, his campaign is laser-focused on the economy, public services and corruption.
Accusations of corruption
Mr Magyar has accused his rival of running an oligarchy that has made itself rich from the public purse, which Mr Orban denies.
Allegations have plagued the prime minister that his family has enriched itself with EU-funded contracts, with his sprawling country estate undergoing major renovations since coming to power.
Brussels froze €18bn of funding and coronavirus-recovery money to Hungary over rule of law concerns, which exposed hollowed-out public services such as failing train networks and rundown hospitals.
Marc Loustau, a Hungary-based fellow at the Central European University, said: “It’s absolutely the case that public services in all of these outer lying rural areas are in a shambles.”
Tourists in the gentrified areas of Budapest were experiencing a “Potemkin Village”, he said, but local people know that, even in the capital, they have to take their own toilet paper to some hospitals.
Mr Magyar speaks at an anti-Orban demonstration held near the Hungarian parliament in Budapest on Thursday – Janos Kummer/Getty
Tisza has also made much of a scandal at a Samsung electric-vehicle battery plant, once the poster child for Mr Orban’s brand of state-subsidised foreign investment.
The factory is accused of exposing workers to cancer-causing chemicals which the government is accused of trying to cover up. Both Samsung and the government deny this.
Dragging the election down to an even murkier level, Mr Magyar said his rivals had obtained a covertly filmed sex tape of himself and his girlfriend, which they planned to release to distract from the Samsung scandal. The kompromat still has not emerged.
The Fitch Ratings agency warned in March that the next government would face “significant” challenges because of low growth and high and rising government debt.
Mr Magyar has sought to portray himself as a safe pair of hands on the economy and has brought in senior business executives from multinationals to form any future cabinet.
Old-school door-knocking
Fidesz controls about 80 per cent of Hungary’s media landscape and has convinced many that Ukraine is their enemy. Social media accounts are flooded with pro-Fidesz messaging.
Cosmopolitan Orban-hating Budapest can be relied on to vote for Tisza.
Mr Magyar has instead invested resources into an old-school campaign through towns and villages to pierce the umbrella of propaganda throughout the countryside.
He has also visited the ethnic Hungarian diaspora in Ukraine, which has strained relations with Mr Zelensky, to convince Fidesz voters they can turn to him.
“He’s presenting himself as Orbanism without Orban,” said Mr Loustau.
Another ‘stop the steal’?
Mr Magyar explicitly supports Hungary’s membership of Nato and the EU, and said he would secure funds from Brussels unfrozen.
EU diplomats warned that would not be a matter of course.
“We are not going to release a whole bunch of money right away. We know it’s not going to be a massive difference from Orban. It’s a step-up, not a panacea,” said one.
Daniel Freund, a German Green MEP who has called for all EU funds to be frozen because of Hungary’s “rampant corruption”, said the election was “hugely important”.
Mr Orban, the EU “poster child” of “illiberal democracy”, had enjoyed a majority for 16 years and had stuffed every leadership position in the country with his allies, he said.
“If Magyar wins narrowly, his operatives speak of a situation that will resemble trench warfare,” he added, suggesting Fidesz would try to frustrate Tisza’s agenda to trigger fresh elections.
Viktor Orban on the campaign trail – Marton Monus/Reuters
Mr Freund admitted there would “not be a complete policy shift” on Ukraine if Tisza won the election, but they would not “abuse the veto as much”.
“The priority is to get rid of Viktor Orban. Once democracy has been restored, then hopefully the plurality of democracy can also come back,” he said.
There are also fears that Mr Orban will, like his allies, Mr Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, claim a lost election was stolen.
“How does the European Union react? How do national governments react if Orban does not accept the election results? What happens if Donald Trump quickly afterwards congratulates him on an election victory that has not happened?” Mr Freund said.
He warned that too many in the EU institutions were taking it for granted that Mr Orban would be beaten.
“It will be a hard awakening on April 13, if he is indeed elected for a fifth mandate,” he said.
Twin rallies
On March 15, Hungary’s national day, Fidesz and Tisza held parallel rallies in the capital.
“Viktor Orban is a traitor who betrayed our common future. He did not build a country, but his own dominion,” Mr Magyar said, accusing his rival of asking Russia to rig the election.
“He did not elevate the homeland, but made it the poorest and most corrupt country in the EU.”
Mr Magyar addresses his supporters during a march in Budapest – Denes Erdos/AP
Mr Orban reserved his fiercest criticism, not for his rival, but for Brussels and Mr Zelensky as he declared, “our sons will not die for Ukraine”.
“Even if they drop hundreds of Brusselite paratroopers on us, we’ll pick them up, smack their bottoms and send them back,” he said.
Referring to the crowds around him, he added: “Do you see this, Ukrainians? Do you see this, Zelensky?”