Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, on Nov. 7, looked confident.
Budapest was hosting the European Political Community gathering, with Orban hugging it out with the continent’s leaders whose standing at home leaves them little leeway to challenge the Russian-friendly prime minister.
Orban’s standing at home, practically unchallenged since 2010, has for quite some time allowed the prime minister to dictate his will to Brussels, Paris, and Berlin, with mixed success.
Yet, Orban’s grip on Hungary looks weaker than ever, with a formidable challenger, Peter Magyar, set to pose a threat come election time in April 2026.
Adding to slaacaa’s fantastic summary, “unites behind” might be a bit of a stretch; there are a miriad of ways to be in the opposition, and it’s not like the US where you essentially pick from two options (maybe three, but the rest is quite insignificant), but there’s like half a dozen parties opposing Fidesz, the governing party. Unfortunately, due to having vastly different approaches and opinions, these parties could never unite properly and there have always been some infighting between them, especially during elections, which doesn’t really give the best impression to voters. They have tried to unite twice already and both attempts led to another 2/3 majority for Fidesz.
Now that finally there is another competitor who seems to have more support (while having about the same amount of ideas and plans for the future), these opposition parties are not all 100% supportive, further diluting votes against the current regime.
It’s still slightly more hopeful than the previous times, because finally Tisza, the new party seems to have more supporters than the largest opposition party that still runs a previous, horribly failing prime minister’s wife.
But saying that the opposition finally unites… Is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.