(April 13): Opposition leader Peter Magyar won resoundingly in Hungary, with key and unexpected backing coming from Viktor Orban’s most important fan base: the nation’s countryside.
The 45-year-old former Orban party insider bet that visiting even the smallest constituencies around the country of 10 million would pay off as he cast the ballot as a decision on whether to stay in the European Union. He spent much of the past two years on the road stumping for his Tisza party, culminating in a final before the vote where he visited as many as seven campaign stops a day.
Magyar’s determination won him a two-thirds parliamentary majority on Sunday, a strong mandate to undo Orban’s 16 years in power. The upstart party made its strongest gains in mid-sized cities that bridge the country’s capital with towns in rural Hungary such as Szekesfehervar, Orban’s birthplace, or Nyiregyhaza close to Ukraine’s border.
Peter Magyar greets voters during an election campaign event in Ujfeherto on April 11.
“He showed up literally everywhere,” Matyas Bodi, a political analyst at ELTE University who runs the Electoral Geography blog, said by phone on Monday. “Almost every Hungarian family has a picture with Peter Magyar or they know someone who has such a photo.”
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Apart from a record post-communist turnout, there was a major shift in how Hungarians voted.
Results showed that Orban’s Fidesz party managed to cling on to only to a handful of constituencies dominated by small villages and suffered surprise losses even in deeply rural districts considered to be its stronghold, like Satoraljaujhely in the country’s northeast and Mohacs in the southwest. The largest settlement it won was Kiskoros, a town of 13,000.
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Magyar’s party took majority of votes among Hungarians aged 18 to 40, compared with about a third of votes among pensioners.
But it wasn’t just Magyar’s omnipresence. It was his focus on domestic issues such as the need to fix the country’s stagnant economy, underfunded healthcare and uproot widespread corruption. Orban, who has built cozy ties with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, kept his focus on being a big international player who gets things done for Hungary.
Many rural voters just thought Orban “left them behind,” Bodi said.
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