The Hungarian state broadcaster M1 spent the early hours of Sunday’s election night reporting on the deer rutting season in Szombathely while the 16-year reign of Viktor Orbán collapsed in real-time. It took the channel another hour to report Orbán’s defeat after other media outlets had already confirmed the result. This surreal avoidance summarized the relationship between the Orbán regime and the man who just trounced him.
Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party secured a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections, winning 138 of the 199 seats. With 53.6 percent of the vote, Magyar didn’t just win; he captured a two-thirds supermajority. Orbán’s Fidesz party plummeted to 55 seats and 37.8 percent of the vote.
Orbán conceded the defeat on Sunday, calling the result „painful“ but „clear.“ He leaves behind a legacy of centralized power and a media apparatus designed to insulate him from political challenge. For two years, that apparatus worked overtime to ignore or slander Magyar, who rose from a Fidesz loyalist to the leader of the opposition.
Magyar plans to suspend state news broadcasts to break the propaganda machinery
State-run M1 functioned as a government mouthpiece for years, a fact recognized even by Orbán’s own supporters. A recent Reuters Digital News Report found only 23 percent of the population trusts its news. The channel’s coverage was characterized by extensive segments featuring government officials and a total absence of interviews with Magyar.
The channel’s desperation peaked in the final weeks of the campaign. M1 launched a series called „Horrors of War,“ featuring a presenter standing in a studio surrounded by AI-generated gravestones and smoking ruins to stoke fear about Hungary being dragged into the Ukraine conflict.
Magyar intends to stop this machinery immediately. He plans to suspend state news broadcasts upon taking office to prevent the continued leverage of public funds for partisan propaganda. He campaigned on a platform of fighting corruption and repairing a stagnating economy and a failing healthcare system.
Orbán’s defeat rattles the AfD in Germany
The shockwaves of the Hungarian result reached Berlin. Politicians from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) now sound like defeated men. After a long silence following the election, some AfD lawmakers tried to dismiss the result as irrelevant to the German context, but the confidence that usually defines the party has vanished.
Orbán served as a blueprint for national-populist movements across Europe. His fall suggests that the populist playbook can run out of road when economic stagnation and corruption outweigh the fear-mongering of the state.
International reactions were swift. Former US President Barack Obama described the victory as a win for democracy globally. Conversely, the result is a blow to Donald Trump, who had endorsed Orbán during the campaign.
Who is Péter Magyar?
He is a lawyer and the president of the Tisza Party. A former member of the governing Fidesz party, he broke away in February 2024 following the Katalin Novák presidential pardon scandal, citing deep dissatisfaction with the government’s direction.
How badly did Viktor Orbán lose?
Orbán lost his 16-year grip on power in a landslide. His party, Fidesz, won only 55 seats, while Magyar’s Tisza party secured 138 seats and a two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament.
What happens to the state media now?
Magyar intends to suspend state news broadcasts to stop the „propaganda machinery“ that previously ignored or slandered him. This move aims to neutralize the state-funded media’s role as a government mouthpiece.
