WASHINGTON (AP) — Last weekend’s big election took place in a small European country nearly half a world away from Washington, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s defeat resonated significantly in the United States.
That’s because President Donald Trump and many US conservatives have long supported Orbán, who has become an icon among the global right for his anti-immigrant stance. The US president’s agenda has striking similarities to 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 re-election bid and even sent Vice President J.D. Vance to Budapest last week – in the midst of the Iran war – to support the incumbent.
Orbán’s loss is a reminder of how the war has reduced Trump’s ability to help allied politicians abroad, as well as the limited ability of leaders to use their power to tilt the vote in their direction in an era of worldwide discontent with incumbents across the ideological spectrum.
“The opposition can win despite the tilted playing field,” said Steven Levitsky, a politics professor at Harvard and co-author of the book “How Democracy Dies.” “Democracies are facing many challenges in many parts of the world, but so are authoritarian regimes.”
Orbán’s defeat has immediate global implications because he is the European leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin and has blocked European Union aid to Ukraine, which is defending itself after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
His downfall was celebrated by both Democrats and Republicans on Sunday, some of whom criticized their administrations for such public support for the Hungarian leader.
“Don’t interfere in the elections of other democracies,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said on social media site X.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi posted: “The freedom-loving people of Hungary voted unequivocally in favor of democracy and the rule of law.”
Matt Schlapp, president of the American Conservative Union, is part of the US right wing that supports Orbán. The Conservative Political Action Conference, chaired by the Schlapp group, held its first European session in Budapest and has made Hungary a regular destination.
Orban is a featured speaker at the group’s conference in Dallas in 2022.
Schlapp said there is an easy explanation for Orbán’s loss.
“In the end, democracies just want change,” he said. “In democracies, you don’t have a king, and ultimately the people speak.”
“The Hungarian people said, ‘We’re having trouble with inflation, the economy and the war. Let’s try the new guy,'” Schlapp said, noting that he supported Trump’s Iran war but that the chaos it 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 visit to Hungary “a huge mistake” given widespread opposition to the Iran war on the continent.
“You invited a representative of the United States of America who has created great chaos in this world?” Sosoaca said in an interview published by the Kremlin-controlled RT network, formerly known as Russia Today. “That was the biggest mistake he could have made before the election.”
How Orban consolidates power
An anti-communist activist in his youth, Orbán was initially elected prime minister in 1998 but turned right after being voted out in 2002. When he returned to power in 2010, Orbán and his Fidesz party implemented a legal framework to consolidate the power he and his allies had developed while he was out of power.
Orbán embraced what he called “illiberal democracy,” building a barrier on Hungary’s southern border to stop migrants from Africa and Asia moving north through Europe. He and his party have stifled LGBTQ+ rights, suppressed press freedom and undermined judicial independence.
Orbán consolidated 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 fill the bench through party loyalists, realigned 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’s supporters have scoffed at suggestions that the Hungarian leader is an enemy of democracy, and on Sunday he was quick to admit his defeat. Democrats fear that Trump will try to use his own executive authority to tilt the November midterms or the 2028 presidential election toward his party, just as Trump tried to use his official power to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
“What matters most to American voters is that even a system cheater can be defeated when the people unite and turn against him,” said Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that says it opposes authoritarianism.
Democrats weigh in
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California took the opportunity to criticize Vance: “Your ally Orban caved. In 2028, will @JDVance follow suit if you lose?” he posted on X.
Defenders of democracy should not take too much comfort in Orbán’s loss, Levitsky said, noting that in some ways Trump has proved more oppressive. He cited Trump’s use of the Justice Department to investigate political opponents and the shooting of protesters by immigration agents – steps the Orban government never took, Levitsky said.
But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said he sees similarities between Trump and Orban’s political projects, as well as the potential fates of their parties at the polls.
“He’s basically doing what Donald Trump is trying to do in the U.S.,” Van Hollen said of Orban. “My reading of the election is that the people of Hungary rejected it, just like the people in the United States are rejecting it back home.”
Trump made no public comments Sunday on the election results in Hungary.
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Riccardi reported from Denver.