Hungary’s Orbán Gets the Boot, America Gets a Lesson for the Midterms

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If you don’t know much about Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orbán, then you can simply judge him by the company he keeps. Ahead of his country’s crucial election on Sunday, he was endorsed by Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and most prominent right-wing European figures.

But that is not why voters sent him packing after a 16-year reign during which he turned Hungary into a “soft autocracy” – and it probably wasn’t even because of his constant attacks on democracy to cement his own power.

Instead, Hungarians were simply fed up with his economic mismanagement, the cronyism, and the corruption. And they no longer bought into his attempts to blame the country’s malaise on anybody but himself – whether that was immigrants or the European Union.

Stop us if any of this sounds familiar, by the way.

That is why voters handed him a crushing defeat… and taught Americans an important lesson ahead of this year’s midterms: Even trying to rig an election won’t protect wannabe authoritarians from losing if they bungle the economy and don’t put in place policies that improve the lives of regular people.

And Orbán definitely tried to rig his country’s democracy, which is why his opponent in the race, Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party, didn’t just have to eke out a victory, he needed a landslide.

On Sunday, he got one.

When all the votes are counted, Tisza is expected to have won a supermajority, which will allow Magyar to amend Hungary’s constitution and, hopefully, return the country to the path of democracy and contributing to the success of the EU instead of being an obstacle.

The result of the election is not only a blow to the ruling party but also to Trump and his MAGA movement.

In many ways, Orbán had turned Hungary into a version of what they want the US to be: a nativist regime that painstakingly dismantled democratic institutions. Like Trump, the outgoing prime minister is unabashedly anti-immigrant and cloaks himself in Christian nationalism.

Therefore, Orbán’s loss might come as a bit of a shock and maybe even a wake-up call to Republicans.

Of course, there is one key difference between him and the US president: When it became clear that his party would lose, Orbán immediately conceded. Trump, on the other hand, is still propagating his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election.

Which really only shows why the midterms have to be a shellacking for the GOP.

What Hungary’s voters have demonstrated on Sunday, however, is that this is possible. And, in some ways, their task was even more monumental because Orbán had 16 years to consolidate power, put in place election rules that favored him, change the media landscape, etc.

Trump and the GOP will have had less than two in November.

And while they have been busy – and will certainly try to do more rigging in the coming months – Hungary’s example shows that won’t be enough if the American people show up in November.

That’s what Hungary’s voters did on Sunday, when 77.8 percent of voters cast their ballots, which shattered the previous record of just over 70 percent from 2002 (for what it’s worth, barely more than half of eligible Americans voted in 2022).

Their combined voices sent such a loud message to Budapest that, even though there were some concerns that he would claim foreign voter interference in the case of a loss, Orbán was forced to concede within hours of polls closing.

Essentially, the victory of Tisza was “too big to rig.”

It’s a lesson that we hope Americans will remember come November.

It is already clear that the 2026 midterms will be unlike any other election, with Donald Trump using all levers of the government to ensure that Republicans maintain control of Congress. This will include a massive voter suppression effort, as evidenced by the president’s efforts to get the GOP to change the rules of the Senate to pass the “SAVE America Act.”

Fortunately, every American has a vote. To ensure that yours is counted, go here to check your registration status. It only takes a few seconds.

Apart from that, we urge all Americans to get involved and make sure their family members and friends are registered as well. Democracy only works if everybody participates.