WASHINGTON — The big election over the weekend was in a small European country nearly half a world away from Washington, but the defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has significant reverberations in the United States.
That’s because President Trump and many U.S. conservatives have long embraced Orbán, who has become an icon among the global right for his anti-immigrant stance. The American president’s agenda has striking parallels with the way the Hungarian leader used the levers of government to tilt the media, judiciary and electoral system to keep his party in power for 16 years.
Trump supported Orbán’s reelection bid and even dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Budapest last week — in the midst of the Iran war — to stump for the incumbent.
Orbán’s loss was a reminder of how the war has diminished Trump’s ability to help allied politicians overseas, as well as of the limited ability of leaders to use their power to tilt voting in their direction in an age of worldwide discontent over incumbents of all ideological stripes.
“Oppositions can win despite a tilted playing field,” said Steven Levitsky, a politics professor at Harvard and coauthor of the book “How Democracies Die.” “Democracies are facing many challenges in many parts of the world, but so are autocracies.”
Orbán’s defeat has immediate global implications because he was the European leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin and had blocked European Union aid to Ukraine, which is defending itself after Russian’s 2022 invasion.
His fall was celebrated on Sunday by both Democrats and Republicans, some of whom criticized their own administration for such overt support for the Hungarian leader.
“Don’t fiddle-paddle in other democracies’ elections,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said on the social media site X.
“The freedom-loving people of Hungary have voted decisively in favor of democracy and the rule of law,” posted Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is part of the wing of the American right that embraced Orbán. The Conservative Political Action Conference, which Schlapp’s group hosts, held its first European session in Budapest and has made Hungary a regular destination.
Orbán was a featured speaker at the group’s conference in Dallas in 2022.
Schlapp said there’s an easy explanation for Orbán’s loss.
“Eventually, democracies just want change,” he said. “In democracies, you don’t have kings, and the people in the end speak.”
“The people of Hungary were saying, ‘We’re having a difficult time with inflation, the economy and the war. Let’s try the new guy,’” Schlapp said, noting that he backs Trump’s Iran war but the turmoil it’s created, especially in European energy markets, hurt Orbán.
Diana Sosoaca, a far-right member of the European Parliament from Romania, on Sunday called Vance’s Hungarian visit “a big mistake” given widespread revulsion at the Iran war on the continent.
“You invite a representative of the United States of America, who created the big disorder in this world?” Sosoaca said in an interview posted by the Kremlin-controlled network RT, formerly known as Russia Today. “It was the biggest mistake he could do before the elections.”
How Orbán consolidated power
An anti-communist activist in his youth, Orbán was initially elected prime minister in 1998 but took a turn to the right after being voted out in 2002. Upon returning to office in 2010, Orbán and his Fidesz party implemented a legal framework to consolidate authority that he and his allies developed while he was out of power.
Orbán embraced what he dubbed “illiberal democracy,” building a barrier on Hungary’s southern border to block migrants from Africa and Asia who were moving northward through Europe. He and his party stifled LGBTQ+ rights, cracked down on freedom of the press and undermined judicial independence.
Orbán cemented his power when his Fidesz party won enough seats in Parliament during the 2010 global recession to rewrite the country’s constitution. They restructured the judiciary to funnel appointments to the bench through party loyalists, redrew legislative districts to make it much harder for Fidesz members to lose elections and helped push Hungary’s media companies to be sold to tycoons allied with Orban.
The European Union has declared Hungary an “electoral autocracy.”
Orbán backers have scoffed at suggestions that the Hungarian leader is an enemy of democracy, and on Sunday he quickly conceded his loss. Democrats have worried that Trump will try to use his own executive power to tilt November’s midterm elections or the 2028 presidential vote to his party, much as Trump tried to use his official powers to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election.
“Most importantly for American voters, even a guy who rigs the system can be defeated when the people unite and turn out against him,” said Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that says it combats authoritarianism.
Democrats weigh in
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California took the opportunity to jab at Vance: “Your ally Orban conceded. In 2028, will you @JDVance follow suit if you lose?” he posted on X.
Levitsky said defenders of democracy shouldn’t take too much comfort from Orbán’s loss, noting that in some ways Trump has been more oppressive. He cited Trump’s use of the Justice Department to investigate political opponents and the shooting deaths of protesters by immigration officers — steps that Orban’s government never took, Levitsky said.
But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said he sees parallels between Trump’s and Orban’s political projects, as well as the potential fate of their parties at the polls.
“He was essentially doing what Donald Trump is trying to do here in the United States,” Van Hollen said of Orban. “My read of the election is that the people of Hungary rejected that, just like people in the United States are rejecting that here at home.”
Trump made no public comments Sunday about the election results in Hungary.
Riccardi and Brown write for the Associated Press. Riccardi reported from Denver.
