BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) – Hungary’s veteran nationalist leader Viktor Orban conceded defeat on Sunday after a landslide election victory by the upstart opposition Tisza party, in a setback for his allies in Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House.
Results based on 46% of votes counted showed the centre-right, pro-EU Tisza party of Peter Magyar winning 135 seats – or a vital two-thirds majority – within the 199-member parliament, ahead of Orban’s Fidesz party.
“The election results will not be final yet, however the situation is comprehensible and clear,” Orban said on the Fidesz campaign offices. “The election result’s painful for us, but clear.
“The responsibility and possibility of governing was not given to us. I even have congratulated the winner.”
Pollsters predicted a record voter turnout, with Hungarian television showing long queues outside some voting stations in Budapest. Data at 1630 GMT, half an hour before polls were attributable to close, showed 77.8% of voters casting their ballots, up from 67.8% 4 years earlier.
If the ultimate results confirm the early readings, an end to Orban’s period in government after 16 years in power would have significant implications not just for Hungary, but for the European Union, Ukraine and beyond.
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It could likely spell an end to Hungary’s adversarial role contained in the EU, possibly opening the best way for a 90 billion euro ($105 billion) loan to war-battered Ukraine blocked by Orban.
Defeat for Orban could also mean the eventual release of EU funds to Hungary that the bloc had suspended attributable to what Brussels said was Orban’s erosion of democratic standards.
Orban’s exit would also deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of his most important ally within the EU and send shockwaves through Western right-wing circles, including the White House.
In Hungary, a Tisza victory could open the best way for reforms that the party says would aim to combat corruption and restore the independence of the judiciary and other institutions.
Nonetheless, the extent of such reforms will depend upon whether Tisza can secure the two-thirds majority it might must reverse much of Orban’s legacy.
Orban carved out a model of an “illiberal democracy” seen as a blueprint by Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and its admirers in Europe.
But many Hungarians have grown increasingly weary of Orban, 62, after three years of economic stagnation and soaring living costs in addition to reports of oligarchs near the federal government amassing more wealth.
Tisza’s leader Magyar appears to have successfully tapped into this frustration.
Casting his vote for Tisza within the Hungarian capital, Mihaly Bacsi, 27, said the country needed change.
“We’d like an improvement in public mood, there is simply too much tension in lots of areas and the present government only fuels these sentiments,” he said.
One other voter, who gave her name as Zsuzsa, said she wanted continuity.
“I would love if all the outcomes which have been achieved lately remain – and I’m terribly afraid of the war,” she said, referring to the conflict raging in Ukraine, Hungary’s eastern neighbour.
Orban sought to forged Sunday’s election as a alternative between “war and peace”. During campaigning, the federal government blanketed the country with signs warning that Magyar would drag Hungary into Russia’s war with Ukraine, something he strongly denies.
– Additional reporting by Krisztina Than, Anita Komuves, Lili Bayer, Thomas Holdstock, Judith Langowski, writing by Justyna Pawlak, editing by Alexander Smith and Gareth Jones