BRUSSELS — Three days before Hungary's parliamentary election, the numbers have consolidated around an outcome that would have seemed implausible twelve months ago: the end of Viktor Orbán's sixteen-year dominance of Hungarian politics.

A Reuters/Median projection published Wednesday shows Péter Magyar's Tisza party on track to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority on Sunday, April 12 — a supermajority that would allow it to amend Hungary's constitution without coalition partners. [1] The projection, based on aggregated polling data, places Tisza at roughly 133 seats in the 199-seat parliament. Orbán's Fidesz-KDNP alliance is projected to fall to approximately 60 seats, its worst showing since 2002. [1]

This paper noted yesterday that Hungary's polls were diverging wildly depending on the institute. That divergence has narrowed but not disappeared. The government-aligned Nézőpont institute still projects Fidesz retaining a parliamentary majority with 109 seats. The independent Median institute projects a Tisza landslide. Both cannot be right. [2]

Vance's Parting Gift

The timing of Vice President Vance's Budapest visit — arriving Tuesday, departing Wednesday for Islamabad — added an American dimension to what was already the most contested Hungarian election in a generation. Vance endorsed Orbán publicly, accused the European Union of "disgraceful interference" in the campaign, and praised Hungary's governance model in a speech at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. [3]

Magyar, the Tisza leader, responded by accusing the White House of precisely the interference Vance had attributed to Brussels. [4] The accusation landed because it was symmetrical: if EU funding conditions constitute interference, so does a vice-presidential endorsement delivered from Budapest four days before an election.

The visit also complicated Vance's credibility as a peace negotiator in Islamabad. European diplomats, who would need to support any sanctions-relief framework emerging from U.S.-Iran talks, noted that Vance had spent his pre-negotiation hours attacking the EU rather than building coalition support. [3]

The Fear Factor

Orbán's campaign has shifted in its final days from policy arguments to existential warnings. Fidesz messaging now centers on claims of foreign interference — from Brussels, from Soros-linked organizations, and from what Orbán characterized on March 26 as Ukrainian intelligence operations in Hungarian politics. [5] A government-commissioned poll found that 80 percent of Hungarians believe foreign actors are attempting to influence the election. The number is high enough to be useful to both sides: Orbán cites it as vindication, Magyar cites it as evidence of government paranoia. [5]

The election, if Median's projection holds, would produce a constitutional supermajority for an opposition that did not exist as a party two years ago. Magyar, a former Fidesz insider who broke with Orbán over corruption allegations, has built Tisza into Hungary's largest opposition force in record time. [1]

What happens after Sunday is the real question. Orbán has spent sixteen years embedding loyalists in Hungary's judiciary, media regulator, prosecution service, and central bank. A Tisza supermajority would have the votes to rewrite the constitution, but rewriting institutions takes longer than rewriting laws. The paper Viktor Orbán built Hungary on is thinner than it looks. Whether the institutions he built are thicker remains to be tested.

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels