Aiming to end the 16-year rule of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his coalition of Fidesz–Hungarian Civic Union and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), opposition parties across the political spectrum backed the government’s most promising challenger, Peter Magyar, chairman of the extra-parliamentary Tisza party, ahead of the elections.
Given the highest voter turnout since the end of the communist regime and the strong support for Magyar’s alternative to Orban’s governance, Hungarian journalist Peter Nemeth likened the result to the drowning of Fidesz in the Tisza River – a name that, in Hungarian, coincidentally matches that of the new ruling party.
Towns and Countryside
As Libby Berry noted before the election, Orban’s rivals could have been expected to win on the basis of the popular vote. However, because of single-member constituencies, many of them located in rural pro-Orban areas, the incumbent was expected to secure more seats and thus greater parliamentary representation. In the event, however, he also lost ground in the countryside.
Magyar’s extensive travel across Hungary over the past two years appears to have paid off. He visited both large and small villages, often repeatedly. In the final days of the campaign, he held five or six rallies a day. His tour concluded on 11 April, the day before the elections, in Debrecen, which he first visited as a politician in 2024. The country’s second-largest city had been a Fidesz stronghold from 1998 until the previous elections, when all three of its candidates were defeated.
Turnout varied by settlement size. Villages with between 500 and 1,000 inhabitants recorded a turnout of 72%, while those with fewer than 500 inhabitants saw a slightly higher figure. Larger cities, however, dominated overall participation. In Budapest, turnout exceeded 83%, while county centers recorded over 75.5%. Cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants also saw strong participation, at almost 76%.
In February, Magyar predicted a revolt of the Hungarian countryside “against a vile, corrupt regime”. The results appear to support that claim. Nearly half a million new opposition voters were recorded in villages, while Fidesz lost about 200,000 supporters in smaller municipalities. Precise data explaining the rural shift away from Orban, however, remain limited.
The shift is likely the result of several factors on both sides, including the building of local party structures, Magyar’s nationwide tour, the country’s economic decline and Fidesz’s system of incentives in smaller municipalities dependent on food aid.
As the American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum notes, Magyar focused on local issues during his campaign and “avoided the themes that Orban chose to promote – global politics, the war in Ukraine, the conspiracy that Ukraine was somehow colluding against or might even invade Hungary”. While the evidence remains incomplete, it is plausible that many rural voters prioritized immediate local concerns over foreign policy considerations.
It is also worth recalling that between 2018 and 2022, Fidesz increased its support in large cities as well, only slightly less than in rural areas. The common assumption that the party relied solely on the countryside to secure majorities is therefore misleading.
Records for Slovakia
The most detailed data are provided by the Hungarian National Electoral Office and the Atlatso investigative portal project. The highest possible turnout of 100% was recorded in the villages of Becskehaza, with 40 inhabitants, Tornakapolna, with 24 inhabitants, and Felsoszenterzsebet, with 15 inhabitants.
The first two are located in Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen county, just a few minutes’ walk from the Slovak border. The third lies in Zala county, close to the Slovenian border.
Another striking result was recorded in constituency No. 2 in Keszthely, where Tisza candidate Balazs Varga won 24,969 votes, narrowly defeating his ruling coalition rival Balint Nagy, who secured 24,921 votes. By contrast, the largest margin – 25,694 votes – was recorded in constituency No. 1 in Szeged, Csongrad-Csanad county, between Peter Stumpf (Tisza) and Levente Farkas (Fidesz-KDNP).
The lowest participation rates were recorded in the villages of Szendrolad, with more than 2,200 inhabitants, Semjen, with 500 inhabitants, and Felsogagy, with 220 inhabitants. All are located in Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen county, close to the Slovak border. Turnout stood at 49.14%, 49.60% and 50.32% respectively.
Voting by Post
Tisza won more than 52% of the vote among participating voters, while Orban’s coalition received less than 40%. Postal voting, however, produced a markedly different outcome. Some 84% of postal votes went to the Fidesz-KDNP coalition, while only 13% of the more than 300,000 voters who cast ballots by mail supported Magyar’s party.
Before the elections, several opposition figures raised concerns about possible irregularities in postal voting among the Hungarian minority in Romania’s Transylvania. In practice, however, the 3,239 votes cast there could not have significantly altered the outcome. More than three million Hungarians voted for Tisza and more than two million for Fidesz and KDNP, representing a decline of almost 700,000 votes compared with the 2022 elections.
For comparison, in Slovakia’s parliamentary elections in 2023, around 58,000 voters used postal voting. Of those, nearly 62% supported Progressive Slovakia, 11% backed Freedom and Solidarity and 6% voted for Smer.