By Kennedy Olivia Bagley-Fortner ’26
Staff Writer
On April 12, 2026, Viktor Orban’s 16-year rule came to an end, ushering in a new wave of politics for the newly elected Prime Minister Peter Magyar.
Orban first served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002. He returned in 2010, remaining in office until he and his political party, Fidesz, was backed into a corner and voted out of power, according to Britannica.
Under Orban’s rule, Hungary has faced numerous challenges such as the erosion of political institutions, a struggling economy, and rising tensions with the EU.
On that Sunday millions of Hungarians came together to vote for Peter Magyar, the figurehead for the Tisza Party. This election “broke an all-time turnout, at nearly 80%, and resulted in a landslide victory for Magyar’s Tisza party,” the Center for European Policy Analysis stated.
Magyar has promised to lead Hungary in what the CEPA is calling a “new dawn” of Hungarian leadership and politics.
In order to understand the significance of this election, we must go back in time to uncover how Orban changed the political landscape of the state.
Johan Norberg, a senior fellow from the CATO Institute, an American libertarian thinktank, wrote in an article, “Viktor Orban was once very different. He represented hope for the future of Europe.” In the early years, along with the political party Fidesz, Orban actually “helped open up Hungary,” and went against the one party rule and played a major role in the creation of democratic institutions.
However, this positivity did not last for long for one obvious reason, “Orban has always been quick to move to where it is politically convenient for him to be,” Norberg stated.
In this case, Orban and Fidesz veered more towards the right, utilizing what many right-wing politicians do these days, promoting religious values, and introducing anti-immigration policies.
In a 2014 speech Orban said, “The Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community that must be organized, reinforced and in fact constructed. And so in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”
Orban continued to reject checks and balances, and put an emphasis on taking away people’s individual freedom by making the state more involved with controlling Hungarian society and its citizens.
From 2010 to 2011, Orban and his political party pushed various legislative changes that were officially adopted in 2012, Britannica reported.
The push for legislative change resulted with the Fidesz using its powers to rewrite the electoral law to support their own political agendas. “Until 2010, local constituencies used a two-round system,” however, “after the reforms, there was only a single round,” the CATO Institute stated.
Orban also significantly “reduced the number of parliamentary seats from 386 to 199 and gerrymandered constituencies.” While this happens in other countries “Fidesz’s position made it possible for the government to do it through Hungary,” the CATO Institute added.
This is especially significant because with changes like that, the Fidesz were able to keep a majority in parliament in 2014, “with just a one-seat margin, despite the vote for his party declining from 52.7 percent to 44.9 percent. If the elections had been following previous rules, Fidesz would have lost its supermajority.”
In addition to changing aspects of voting to help him stay in power, Orban then went after the free press. According to the Reporters Without Borders index, which “measures the violations of press freedom in the world,” Hungary dropped from having the 23rd most free press in 2010 to 68th in 2025.
While Orban changed numerous parts of Hungarian society, one crucial element that cost him his reelection was the economy.
“By the end of Orban’s second term in office the state had taken control of around 300 to 400 companies in such diverse sectors as banking, energy, shipyards, airports, restaurants, broadcasting … Many of these companies were eventually redistributed to the government’s friends and allies, creating a network of dependent companies” the CATO Institute stated.
In this case, when the state has control of various industries and markets it can negatively impact people. One example of this was when the National Gallop, a horse racing festival in Budapest was suddenly denied “the traditional permit to use public space until it had been sold to a friend of the government,” the CATO Institute stated.
By doing actions like this, the Hungarian government was able to ban private companies and create a new monopoly over various markets.
In doing as much, Orban had not only damaged political institutions, but also the free press and citizens’ individual liberty.
This raises a question of why did Hungarians decide to vote for Peter Magyar, and not past Orban opponents if Orban’s hold on society was so extreme?
In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Chair of International Relations Christopher Mitchell said that there are two major reasons why Magyar has had more success than previous Orban opponents.
One being that the “Hungarian economy has continued to stagnate, leading to growing dissatisfaction with the regime from people who otherwise were willing to tolerate Orban in a growing economy”
Two being that “Magyar did a good job of casting Orban’s authoritarianism as not just a problem in principle, but also in practice. Earlier Orban opponents focused on democracy erosion as the problem in itself, but Magyar cast the Orban regime as essentially a criminal organization, focusing not just on authoritarianism in the abstract but also as the Orban government enriching itself at the expense of the Hungarian people,” Mitchell added.
According to Mitchell, all of this “linked well with growing economic dissatisfaction” that helped to “convince people who were unmoved by the importance of defending democracy in principle that Orban’s authoritarianism was having a practical and harmful effect on them.”
For Mitchell, “Magyar has campaigned on restoring Hungarian democracy, and won a supermajority, which will allow him to reverse Orban’s changes.” While it took Hungary more than a decade to exit the extreme right, it’s now up to Magyar to push the country into a new era of politics.
Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.