toughest

The parliamentary election could end Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s 16-year hold on power.

Polls have opened in Hungary’s parliamentary elections with incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orban facing his biggest electoral challenge after 16 years in power.

Voting in the election for the 199-seat parliament started at 6am local time (0400 GMT) and is due to close at 7 pm (0500 GMT).

Opinion polls over the last two weeks have shown Orban’s Fidesz party trailing Peter Magyar’s upstart centre-right opposition Tisza party by 7-9 percentage points, with Tisza at around 38-41 percent.

Orban, a eurosceptic nationalist, has cast the election as a choice between “war and peace”. During campaigning, the government blanketed the country with signs warning that Tisza leader Magyar would drag Hungary into Russia’s war with Ukraine, something he strongly denies.

“I am looking forward to Sunday’s election with the best hope,” Orban told supporters in his birthplace Szekesfehervar.

“If we know ourselves well, if we know our country well and if we know our own people well, then I must say Hungarians will vote for safety on Sunday,” he added.

Many Hungarians have however grown increasingly weary of 62-year old Orban, after three years of economic stagnation and soaring living costs as well as reports of oligarchs close to the government amassing more wealth.

“I am very excited but also very scared,” Kriszta Tokes, a 24-year-old who sells postcards and trinkets in Budapest, told the Reuters news agency.

“I know that my future depends on this,” she said, adding that she plans to leave Hungary if Orban wins.

England won all eight of their qualifying games, scoring 22 goals and conceding none to finish comfortably clear at the top of Group K.

However, their group opponents were Albania, Andorra, Latvia and Serbia – four sides ranked outside the top 20 in the world.

Indeed their toughest test in terms of ranking last year was a friendly against Senegal, who were 19th in the world at the time. England lost 3-1.

It may have been a non-competitive match, but the Three Lions’ performance in that game was concerning.

“No discernible plan. No identity. No improvement – arguably even a regression – since Sir Gareth Southgate stepped down after defeat by Spain in the Euro 2024 final in Berlin,” wrote BBC Sport’s chief football writer Phil McNulty after the game.

“[Tuchel] may offer up mitigating circumstances as he made 10 changes from the World Cup qualifying win against Andorra, plus this was a friendly at the end of a long season. But it was still a sobering, alarming evening as Senegal outclassed England.”

While that result and performance may have been a blip, England needed to face higher-ranked opponents to test them before heading to the World Cup – and they should get that against Uruguay and then Japan, who are 19th in the world.