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Hungary’s election delivered an unprecedented victory for Viktor Orbán’s challenger. With a record turnout of nearly 80% and a supermajority for the Tisza party of almost 70% of the seats, this was not merely a change of government: it was a change of regime, compressed into a single election night.
After 16 years in power, Orbán became the victim of his own creation. Hungary’s electoral machinery, carefully engineered to convert a relative majority into overwhelming parliamentary dominance, worked perfectly – just not for him. In the end, the opposition leader, Péter Magyar, did not need to dismantle the system; he simply recognised the rules of the game and played to win. Orbán’s 2011 electoral laws, designed to punish a fragmented opposition, ultimately proved fatal to their creator, when he was faced with a challenger who could turn those winner-takes-all mechanics to his advantage.
Magyar’s performance throughout this election cycle was exceptional. His rapid construction of Tisza as a major political force, combining party-building, relentless campaigning and a commanding social-media presence, will be analysed for years. He took to the new-media environment, in which Fidesz had long appeared unbeatable, like a duck to water.
Yet, impressive as these tactics may be, they alone do not explain the scale of Tisza’s landslide victory. The factors now being cited as the cause of Orbán’s downfall – impoverishment, corruption and a confrontational foreign policy – were all present in previous election cycles. Indeed, for a long time, they were actually pillars of his success.
The difference in this election? Time.
Consider a plastic bag filled with water. You can hold it for hours and nothing seems to happen. The shape remains stable. Yet internally, the structure is shifting – molecules moving, fibres stretching. Eventually, the bag tears without warning. Political stability is often like this. It is not always a sign of strength, but a mask for accumulating tensions.
The effect of the passage of time undermined the Orbán system on three distinct levels.
First, the political technology wore out. The communication machine that once allowed Fidesz to frame everything from migration to inflation as the fault of enemies of the nation gradually lost its grip on the public. The narrative of the external enemy became too inflated. After four years, warlike rhetoric lost its shock value. The antagonistic billboards remained, but they increasingly felt like background scenery rather than an accurate snapshot of reality. The Orbán regime’s constant alarmism led to public exhaustion, and the technology of winning hearts and minds became less effective, simply because it had been overused.
Second, Orbán himself grew tired. Political analysis often avoids physical explanations, yet the contrast was striking. Orbán, once a master of the campaign trail, appeared restrained and cautious. He often limited himself to one controlled event a day.
In contrast, Magyar operated with political hyperactivity. He managed seven or eight appearances a day and maintained an intense presence online and offline. While Orbán tried to adapt to the logic of social media, Magyar moved within it as a native speaker. He did not just use the platforms: he existed inside them. This was a contest between a skilled but fatigued actor and a fast, adaptive personality. Supporters saw a choice between a routine-driven grandfather figure and a young, high-energy challenger.
Third, everyday realities began to reassert themselves. Hospital conditions, the cost of living and the quality of public services proved more stubborn than campaign slogans. It turns out that hospital supplies matter more to voters than conspiracy theories about Brussels. Inflation replaced culture wars, and the desire for a functioning country supplanted the politics of enemy-making. Illiberal populism suddenly had to confront reality. The collapse of the Orbánist consensus suggests that even the most sophisticated disinformation ecosystems have a finite shelf life.
Viewing time as the primary driver of this defeat clarifies the result. This was not the consequence of a single scandal or failure, but rather the culmination of a slow and unmanageable erosion of power.
This lesson goes beyond Hungary. Even a perfectly polished political machine can become rigid and hollow. When a regime retreats into a bubble and excludes dissent, it loses the ability to renew itself. At that point, stability becomes rigidity, and the system loses its capacity to adapt. While it may appear unchanged from the outside, it becomes increasingly fragile, until it collapses.
Time is a silent but relentless force of erosion. This force is far more dangerous for authoritarian systems than for open societies. Democratic societies draw their resilience from their capacity to change. Like the plastic bag, the rigid system holds for a long time. Then, suddenly, it tears.
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Tibor Dessewffy is director of the digital sociology research centre at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations
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