Fifty-three point six percent. That was Peter Magyar's vote share in Hungary's April 12–13 elections — the largest ever recorded by a single party in modern Hungarian history, and the number that ended Viktor Orbán's 16-year grip on power.
With 97.35% of precincts counted by the morning of April 13, Magyar's centre-right Tisza party had won 138 of 199 parliamentary seats. Orbán's Fidesz party took 55 seats on 37.8% of the vote. Voter turnout reached roughly 80% — the highest in modern Hungarian history, and a figure that signals an electorate that made a deliberate choice, not a protest abstention. Magyar, 44, declared victory before dawn: "Hungary has chosen Europe, the rule of law, and the future." Orbán, who governed Hungary as prime minister since 2010 and previously from 1998 to 2002, conceded defeat in a brief statement and said he would lead the opposition.
Orbán's tenure reshaped Hungary more thoroughly than any peacetime government in Central Europe since 1989. He rewrote the constitution in 2011 with a two-thirds majority, packed the constitutional court with allies, dismantled judicial independence, and turned state media into a government communications arm. The European Commission stripped Hungary of €30 billion in cohesion and recovery funds between 2022 and 2024, citing democratic backsliding. Orbán responded by vetoing or delaying more than 40 EU decisions related to Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and shared military procurement — a pattern that made Budapest one of the most disruptive actors inside the bloc.
