The Winners and Losers of Viktor Orbán's Election Loss in Hungary

The illiberal icon has lost. What does it mean?

Photo by Ervin Lukacs on Unsplash

After a major sporting event, The Ringer likes to publish “winners and losers” columns.¹ The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World very much enjoys reading these analyses the morning after said major sporting event. They’re entertaining and informative.

I thought about writing something straightforward after Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán lost and lost badly following sixteen years of his illiberal Fidesz party staying in power, or how Peter Magyar and his Tisza Party put in the necessary sweat equity to defeat him with the veto-proof majorities to reverse a lot of Orbán’s structural illiberalism.

But versions of that have already been written — so let’s focus on all the fun winners and losers!²

LOSER: JD VANCE

I mean, come on, this one writes itself — almost everything Vance has attached himself over the past year to has ended badly. He’s had a much worse first year in office than Kamala Harris — and Harris did not have a great first year as VP. Vance campaigned for Orban in Hungary the week before Orbán trounced at the ballot box — and as a result the betting odds shifted even more in Magyar’s favor.

The headlines possibly written by AI almost wrote themselves:

• “Vance Bitterly Humiliated as Voters Turn Out in Droves to Reject His Pleas”

• “JD Vance mocked over weekend of failures in Iran and Hungary: ‘On a historic roll’”

• “Anything Vance touches ‘dies’? Viktor Orban’s loss triggers meme storm against VP”

Vance himself has tried to shrug off the loss — but as Brian Beutler points out, Vance’s “noble loser but loyal soldier” schtick has its political limits:

His goal all along has been to keep himself clean enough to all factions of the pro-Trump coalition that he remains heir to Trump by default. That of course entails being Trump’s errand boy, setting himself up for humiliation after humiliation. But he’s recently tacked on an aggressive public relations offensive to portray himself as a tragic hero, hard at work keeping things on an even keel. The only senior official with both the wisdom to suspect war with Iran would descend into quagmire and the courage to say so to the boss’s face. Allegedly….

This has already created a bunch of problems. By depicting himself as the lone voice of reason, Vance has managed to alienate almost all of his colleagues…. He’s thus positioned himself as the avatar of MAGA’s future at the exact moment when he’s failing most visibly. His pitch: Join our party, where the only worthy person is an arrogant loudmouth taking L after L.

Yep, he’s a loser.

WINNERS: EUROPEAN UNION AND UKRAINE

Vance repeatedly articulated that the reason was backing Orbán was because they shared a common antipathy towards the European Union.³ Orbán had been a thorn in the EU’s side for well over a decade. But now, as the New York Times’ Jeanna Smialek explains, that thorn has been excised:

Mr. Orban has often stood in the way of critical policy goals for the European Union, including blocking a loan to Ukraine and sanctions packages targeting Russia. His administration has also been viewed as a security risk at sensitive meetings because of its comparatively cozy ties to the Kremlin.

With the victory of Hungary’s opposition party, led by Peter Magyar, that could begin to change.

Mr. Magyar and his Tisza party have struck a friendlier tone toward both the European Union and NATO. As voting was underway on Sunday, he pointed out that it was taking place on the anniversary of a 2003 vote in favor of Hungary joining the European Union, a potential signal that he wanted to break with Mr. Orban’s animosity toward Brussels.

Most immediately, the new leadership is widely expected to clear the path for a 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine that has been frozen for weeks because of Mr. Orban’s objections.

While Magyar does not necessarily see eye-to-eye with Ukraine on every issue, he’s definitely going to be friendlier to that country than Orbán. So, winners!

LOSERS: DONALD TRUMP AND VLADIMIR PUTIN

Let’s just pause here for a second and recognize the absurdity of the United States and Russia backing the same horse in a European electoral democracy. That should not be happening like, at all in the year of our lord 2026. It’s a horrible confirmation of how low American foreign policy and American values has sunk during Trump’s second term in office.

Russia loses a valuable inside man within the European Union. Politico characterized Orban’s government as, “a key source of inside information” within Brussels. That pipeline will now be severely constricted.

As for Trump, he has boosted Orban for quite some time, even promising all sorts of economic goodies to Hungary if they re-elected him. And no wonder — the parallels between the fate of Fidesz and the fate of the GOP in the midterms and in 2028 are too obvious for even MAGA to ignore.

With the massive loss by Fidesz, Trump and his MAGA acolytes can’t ignore the harbinger of doom for their own political future. As the New York Times’ Kellen Browning and Shane Goldmacher write:

Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement have long shared DNA with Mr. Orban’s brand of right-wing politics, with both taking hard-line anti-immigration stances, working to curb press freedoms and expressing concern about falling birthrates….

Just days later Hungarians roundly rejected a fifth term for Mr. Orban. Now the scale of his defeat is setting off alarm bells for the American right, because many of Mr. Trump’s supporters have seen Mr. Orban as a kindred spirit and as an incubator of ideas that they embraced.”

Well, fortunately for Trump, under his leadership the U.S. economy will no doubt rebound soon as the war in Iran concludes quickly and cleanly- HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! It feels good to laugh.

WINNER: DEMOCRACY — AND FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

A decade ago I wrote a Brookings paper entitled, “Five known unknowns about the next generation global political economy” that referenced Orbán:

One of the unspoken assumptions of the past generation was that free-market capitalism was the only viable economic model for generating economic growth. Another unspoken assumption that that for affluent countries, democracy was “locked in.” In other words, it was assumed that the advanced industrialized democracies would stay democratic and capitalist, and that the rest of the world would seek to emulate that model. But it is now at least possible to conceive of an alternative governance model of political economy….

Elected leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán have said explicitly that “liberal democratic states can’t remain globally competitive,” and that it is better to create “an illiberal new state” inspired by Russia and China. The issue is not whether Orbán is actually correct, but that he is publicly willing to articulate such an alternative. Such disdain among political leaders reflects populist trends across the developing world—including the United States— that show waning faith in democracy.

Orbán’s performance in office has helped put the kibosh on the allure of his illiberal democracy model. As Paul Krugman pointed out yesterday, “when Orbán took power, Hungary was roughly as rich as Poland and substantially richer than Romania. Since then Poland has pulled far ahead while Romania has caught up:” Voters noticed.

The fact that Orbán conceded so quickly shows that, as illiberal a democrat as he has been, he is still a democrat: he recognized and acknowledged the electoral results. A reminder: that puts Orbán one step above Trump, who refuses to acknowledge his 2020 loss to this day.

And who knows, maybe Orban’s loss will even encourage those who like to bash Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis to actually read his argument before glibly dismissing it.

1. Take this one on the last day of the NBA season, in which the Boston Celtics proved me right yet again.

2. With apologies to Politico, which already produced something of this ilk.

3. The one way Vance is like Trump is his utter shamelessness — like when he violated all kinds of foreign policy norms to campaign in another country’s election while blasting the European Union for election interference.