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- V iktor Orbán’s electoral loss was a slap in the face for Donald Trump and JD Vance, who had enthusiastically endorsed Europe’s most visible autocrat but proved unable to salvage his candidacy.
Prioritize opposition unity. Orbán was defeated by a broad coalition led by Péter Magyar under the banner of his new Tisza party. The opposition’s unity mattered. As some Democrats remain wedded to purity tests, refusing to make common cause with people who reject one or more progressive tenets, Hungarians from across the political spectrum joined hands in the shared goal of defeating Orbán. For them, the debate between right and left paled in importance compared to the need to redeem Hungary’s democracy. Some political parties even refrained from fielding candidates, sacrificing their immediate interests to avoid dividing the anti-Orbán vote.
Fight from the center. Hardly a progressive, Magyar comes from the center right, with conservative views on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. For two decades, he was a member of Orbán’s Fidesz party before leaving to start Tisza. Some American progressives believe the best way to beat Trumpism is to turn left, hoping that a mobilized base will stem the tide on the right. But Magyar fought a centrist campaign, targeting the movable middle. The effort yielded a 79% turnout on election day, the highest since the collapse of communism in 1989, reaching across the political spectrum.
Economics matter. Like many autocrats, Orbán used social wedge issues in lieu of an economic program. He railed against immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, the European Union, Ukraine, even the philanthropist George Soros. Yet Magyar kept returning to economic themes – Fidesz’s endemic corruption, Hungary’s anemic economy, the decrepit state of infrastructure and public services. Those bread-and-butter issues resonated with voters more than Orbán’s diversionary appeals to social enemies. Democrats should do the same.
Divisiveness can backfire. Orbán maintained his rule for 16 years by dividing society. He painted his opponents as tools of Brussels or Kyiv, as partisans of immigrants over native Hungarians. Yet a society divided between us and them is primed to consolidate behind an anti-incumbent message. If the choice is binary, and the ruling party is increasingly seen as corrupt and self-serving, embracing the alternative becomes more attractive.
Orbán also became a victim of his own success. Much like Trump, he had dominated the government for so long that he had no one left to blame for its failures. His scapegoating ceased to convince.
Election rigging has its limits. Orban was notorious for manipulating the Hungarian electoral system with gerrymandering and other tricks to yield a supermajority in parliament despite thin majorities, or mere pluralities, at the ballot box. For example, voters in some rural constituencies, where Orbán was most popular, were given three times the parliamentary weight of urban voters. The supermajority allowed him to change the constitution and appoint loyalists without seeking opposition votes.
But that electoral engineering proved dangerous as the political tide turned in favor of the opposition. Rather than give up on rural constituencies the way some Democrats in the United States do, Magyar spent much time campaigning in the countryside. Tisza’s 53% showing in the polls yielded its own supermajority – 141 of 199 seats, safely beyond the 133 seats needed to amend the constitution. That will help Tisza dismantle Orbán’s autocratic rule and revive Hungary’s democracy.
Trump’s gerrymandering poses a similar threat to Republicans. The strategy of spreading Republican voters among several districts, anticipating wins by slimmer majorities rather than “wasting” votes in overwhelming pro-Republican districts, is premised on the electorate voting largely along the same party lines in the next election as the last one. But that’s a dangerous calculation if voter sentiment shifts, as it seems to have done. Once it passes a “tipping point”, a thinner Republican majority can transform a formally safe seat into a contested one.
The autocrat’s playbook doesn’t guarantee success. A key element of the autocrat’s playbook is its prescription for tilting the electoral playing field in favor of an incumbent. By limiting or co-opting independent voices – journalists, civil society, universities – an autocrat creates a media environment in which his message dominates. Yet Magyar shows it is possible to overcome that advantage. He did it through an energetic schedule of in-person campaign events and the effective use of social media. He was aided by years of work by the remaining independent journalists and civil-society groups that exposed the Orbán government’s self-dealing. Similar work should continue in the United States as well. Now is no time for fatalism.
Sycophants give bad advice. One consequence of Orbán’s stifling of dissent was that he lived in a classic autocratic echo chamber. He heard what he allowed to be said. But leaders who trust their gut as a source of brilliance make big mistakes. Among Orbán’s was his corruption – the lavish estates of his family members while ordinary Hungarians scraped by, his use of government funds to pay off cronies rather than provide services that Hungarians need. Despite his promotion of family values, his associates pardoned the deputy director of a children’s home who had been convicted of covering up child sexual abuse. His close cooperation with the Russian government backfired. Magyar highlighted all of these.
Trump is prone to the same tendencies. But with far more power at his disposal, his mistakes, such as bombing Iran, are even bigger. Republicans have largely refrained from challenging him. Democrats should highlight their complicity.
External support for democracy matters. The European Union assisted the revival of democracy in Hungary, as it did in Poland in 2023. Because of concerns about Hungary’s “illiberal” democracy and disregard for the rule of law, the EU has been withholding various financial allocations from Hungary – such as Covid recovery funds and “cohesion” funds intended to level market conditions – totaling approximately €32bn ($36.9bn), or about 15% of Hungary’s GDP. That deepened Hungary’s economic strains.
EU conditionality had a similar effect in Poland, contributing to the 2023 electoral victory of prime minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition party over the right wing, autocratic Law and Justice party (though Law and Justice retains the weaker presidency). No foreign governmental body holds similar economic sway in the United States, but external support of journalists and activists can still bolster their efforts to restore democracy.
Autocracy is reversible. Perhaps the most important lesson is that history does not march relentlessly toward autocracy. Even Orbán had to face reality and concede defeat. He mounted no January 6-style effort to cling to power.
There is a tendency these days to despair about democracy, to feel that its day has come and gone. But from Bangladesh to Brazil, the people of many global south countries, forced to live under autocracy, have repeatedly shown they want out. Now that message has been sent from the heart of Europe.
We must never forget that the autocrat’s project is fundamentally one of self-promotion. Why do autocrats undermine the various tools and methods that citizens use to hold executive power to account? Because that’s the best way to line the pockets of their families and the cronies who keep them in power rather than serve the public interest.
Trump and Vance are not the only ones who saw themselves in Orbán. Many Americans also see similarities. That should send chills down the spines of Republicans as they approach the midterms.
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Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments
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