As Hungarians voted in record numbers on Sunday in an election widely expected to end Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s 16-year grip on power, the day carried consequences far beyond his country. For Donald Trump, whose administration had staked its diplomatic prestige on keeping his closest European ally in office, the likely fall of Orban arrives at a moment of crisis at home — the realtor-politician’s support is splintering over the Iran war few in his ‘MAGA’ base had wanted.
By mid-day in Budapest, voter turnout was over 40%, an unprecedented figure in Hungary’s post-communist history.
Prediction market Polymarket placed the probability of opposition leader Peter Magyar becoming Hungary’s next prime minister above 80%, while contracts on Orban’s survival fell as low as 18%. Around $67 million had been traded on the question. Polls close at 7 pm local time (10:30 pm IST), with partial results expected an hour later.
The vote represents the starkest challenge yet to Orban’s self-styled model of “illiberal democracy”. He has gone from a left-wing radical to a far-right one.
Trump has repeatedly endorsed his far-right stance as a blueprint for his Make America Great Again or MAGA governance.
Orban’s centre-right rival, Peter Magyar, a former insider who broke with the ruling party Fidesz in 2024, has led in independent polls by seven to nine percentage points, with his Tisza party polling at 38-41%.
Magyar, 45, has built his campaign on middle-class drawing-room-discussion issues that also resonate with the poor. He has spoken on the collapsing public healthcare, economic stagnation, and “rampant government corruption”.
Outside his polling station on Sunday morning, Magyar framed the election in starkly civilisational terms: “This is a choice between East or West, propaganda or honest public discourse, corruption or clean public life.”
Orban, after casting his own ballot at a nearby booth, remained defiant: “I’m here to win.”
The Trump administration had done everything short of casting a ballot itself to prevent a Magyar victory.
Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest on April 7 for what was billed as a ‘Day of Hungarian-American Friendship’. Essentially, a campaign rally. Standing before thousands of Orban supporters, Vance asked the crowd, “Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers? Then my friends, go to the polls on the weekend; stand with Viktor Orban.”
Vance also held his phone to the microphone so Trump could address the crowd directly. After some struggles and voicemail reroutes, Trump came to the line and said, “I’m a big fan of Viktor. I’m with him all the way. The United States is with him all the way.”
What binds Trump and Orban
On his Truth Social account last week, Trump wrote that his administration stood ready to use “the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy” if Orban won.
“We are excited to invest in the future prosperity that will be generated by Orban’s continued Leadership!” he said, and made another post, saying, “Hungary: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBÁN. He is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
The ideological bond between the two men runs deep.
Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist who has known Orban since the 1990s and chairs the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, explained the logic.
“This American administration believes that there is a Trumpian revolution, and that this Trumpian revolution is coming to Europe, and that Europe is just one electoral cycle behind the United States,” Krastev told CNN.
He said the Trump administration views Orban and his ideological infrastructure as central to a push for a Europe that’s “anti-woke, anti-green, anti-immigrant”.
Binding Trump and Orban together, perhaps more than any other single factor, is their shared admiration for Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin. This affinity has persisted even as Russian forces have continued their war in Ukraine.
Trump famously called Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 “genius” and “savvy”.
Orban has made no secret of his own relationship with Moscow. He reportedly told Putin in a phone call, “I can help in any way. There’s a story in our Hungarian picture books where a mouse helps a lion. I am ready to help immediately.” He even blocked the EU’s 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine and vetoed key decisions that would have aided Kyiv’s defence.
Both Trump and Orban have consistently framed Russia not as an aggressor, but as a power to be accommodated.
‘Trumpian revolution’ fading at home
But even as the Trump administration is spending its diplomatic capital in Hungary, the US President’s standing at home has been deteriorating in ways that would have been unimaginable a year ago when he started his non-consecutive second term.
The Iran war launched on February 28 under ‘Operation Epic Fury’ has cracked open fissures in the MAGA coalition. Talks held in Pakistan over the weekend hit a wall, though for now there is a temporary truce till April 21.
Some of Trump’s most loyal voices — commentator Tucker Carlson, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich, former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — have publicly rebuked Trump over the war, and sometimes even his whole approach to governance. There are voices against his support for Israel. His top intelligence aide Joe Kent quit last month saying Israel “blackmailed” Trump into the Iran war.
Carlson has taken a Christian conservative angle to even Trump’s criticism, thus using MAGA terms to slam him. “We’ve intentionally bombed civilian infrastructure. That’s totally unacceptable. Not under the phony laws of some international body, but under moral law, God’s law,” he said. Trump and his war secretary Pete Hegseth have pointedly used religious references in the war against the Shia Muslim country of Iran.
Trump had won significant support because he had campaigned against foreign entanglements, his supporters have underlined. His old social media posts hold proof of this.
Trump made a long post on Truth Social, calling his critics “stupid people” with “low IQs”. He also claimed that a poll showed 99% of MAGA supports his war. He did not share details.
Surveys do tell a story, but much more differently. Trump’s approval among independent voters has fallen to just 28%, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. This group was central to his 2024 victory and will be decisive in November’s midterm elections, CNN has reported.
A Morning Consult survey found his approval rating to be positive in just 17 of 50 states, down from 22 states earlier in the year.
In Hungary, voters seem set to reject the political model Trump has long championed. A retiree named Eszter Szatmari, 62, told news agency Bloomberg that this election is “basically our last chance to see anything vaguely resembling democracy in Hungary”.
Analyst Ivan Krastev said the stakes could not be higher or more symbolic.
“If Orban loses — the man who is the symbol of the strength of the far right — this is going to have an incredible psychological impact,” he reportedly said.
