Advocates of liberal democracy everywhere are celebrating Péter Magyar’s triumph over Viktor Orbán. But among the lessons to draw from the Hungarian experience, the most important may be that toppling an illiberal populist is not as straightforward as much of the press coverage has made it seem.
PRINCETON—Péter Magyar’s landslide victory in Hungary has triggered a global outpouring of commentary that sometimes reads like a trashy banner ad: “This one secret technique will make your far-right populism problem disappear!” Hungary’s experience supposedly demonstrates that one need only focus on the incumbent’s corruption or unite the opposition in order to triumph.
Alas, if defeating populist autocrats were so straightforward, the Viktor Orbáns and Recep Tayyip Erdoğans of the world would have been ousted long ago. While one can indeed learn from Magyar’s multi-pronged campaign, the lessons are more subtle than the recent flurry of hot takes would suggest, and some may not be applicable to larger countries.
As a former Fidesz insider, Magyar understood that the electoral system had two vulnerabilities. Fidesz counted on the opposition always being divided, and it assumed that challengers would never gain substantial support in rural areas, where Orbán’s cronies controlled the local press (and where poorer citizens were sometimes bribed and threatened to vote for the government). Magyar exploited both premises.
In the 2022 elections, Hungarian opposition parties had indeed united, fielding as their candidate for prime minister a likeable mayor from a city with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. But this coalition looked too heterogeneous, leading many to wonder which policies it would actually pursue if elected. Moreover, since there was little real campaigning by the opposition in the countryside, the choice of a small-town mayor seemed like a token gesture.
Magyar, by contrast, spent two years crisscrossing the country, holding multiple rallies per day. And like Zohran Mamdani in New York, he complemented this traditional retail-politics strategy with a savvy social media strategy. Ultimately, it was this constant, credible presence even in small villages—rather than his specific policy positions on big issues like immigration—that made the difference.
Magyar was also lucky in some ways. Protest movements elsewhere have often shied away from allying with parties that could dilute their own moral purity, which puts a ceiling on their support. But as Magyar rose in popularity, some older parties stood down entirely, and others were effectively wiped out on election day. He could thus signal a clean break not only from what citizens started to call “filthy Fidesz,” but from all the establishment politicians who had been around for decades. And because he happened to be untainted by the older, largely discredited opposition, he could mobilize important parts of civil society (not to mention individual citizens, many of whom provided him with accommodation and car rides).
Equally instructive was Magyar’s focus on corruption, which he presented as an issue affecting Hungarians’ everyday lives. He linked Orbán’s “mafia state” directly to the systematic undermining of democracy and the social contract. The country’s education and health systems were buckling because critical funding had been channeled to Orbán’s cronies, and this looting went unchecked because Fidesz had used its iron grip on the political system to subvert the rule of law.
Magyar promised a reckoning, and one does not have to be a particularly vindictive person to see the appeal of this message. When people are suffering in their daily lives while their kleptocratic leaders grow rich, the prospect of restoring accountability can generate immense political energy. Partly owing to the European Union’s decision to freeze EU funds in response to Orbán’s rule-of-law violations, the Hungarian economy has been essentially stagnant, and the cost-of-living crisis has only deepened.
Since this major source of Hungary’s economic woes is well known, Magyar could credibly promise a solution: have Hungary join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and establish a special institution to recover stolen assets.
Of course, the remnants of the old regime are likely to resist. But not only does Magyar have a majority large enough to change the constitution; he can also use the former regime’s rhetoric against it. When Orbán won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in 2010, he declared that a “revolution at the voting booths” had legitimized his Orwellian proposal for a “System of National Cooperation” (an illiberal state designed to consolidate his own power). Having won more votes than Fidesz ever did, Magyar can credibly claim a mandate to undo Orbán’s entire project.
It is comforting to think that Magyar’s win has vindicated centrism. But at a time when centrists have been making concessions to the far right (on immigration, transgender rights, and other issues), it would be a mistake to conclude that elections are won through such positioning. The winners are those who understand how the political system works and how it is stacked against them (a lesson for US Democrats concerned about gerrymandering and election interference by the Trump administration); who out-organize the other side and message with purpose (ordering party members to post one meme per day, as Orbán did, comes across as phony); and who can create powerful symbols that capture a general sense of discontent.
One enduring image from this election will be the crowds of anti-Fidesz voters wearing zebra hats and costumes, in reference to the sprawling landed estate where Orbán’s father kept exotic animals. As saccharine as it sounds, that kind of grassroots negative campaigning, combined with credible promises of a clean break from the status quo and a better future, can enable a victory that destroys the aura of inevitability that so many populists have created for themselves.
About the Author:
Jan-Werner Mueller is a Professor of Politics at Princeton University, is the author, most recently, of Democracy Rules (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021; Allen Lane, 2021).