BUDAPEST—Viktor Orban placed his bet early, and he placed it smartly. A decade ago, in early 2016 he made a beeline for Donald Trump, later agreeing with Trump’s description of them both as “black sheep” who would get on well. This was at a time when the Republican maverick was seen as a long shot for the U.S. presidency.

“Orban had nothing to lose,” said Andras Biro-Nagy, director of Policy Solutions, a political research institute in Budapest. “He already had a terrible relationship with the Democrats.” From that moment, the MAGA movement saw Orban as its most important supporter in Europe, a continent that Trump ideologues denounced as liberal and “woke.” A succession of strategists from the inner circle, starting with Steve Bannon, began to spend time in Budapest.

BUDAPEST—Viktor Orban placed his bet early, and he placed it smartly. A decade ago, in early 2016 he made a beeline for Donald Trump, later agreeing with Trump’s description of them both as “black sheep” who would get on well. This was at a time when the Republican maverick was seen as a long shot for the U.S. presidency.

“Orban had nothing to lose,” said Andras Biro-Nagy, director of Policy Solutions, a political research institute in Budapest. “He already had a terrible relationship with the Democrats.” From that moment, the MAGA movement saw Orban as its most important supporter in Europe, a continent that Trump ideologues denounced as liberal and “woke.” A succession of strategists from the inner circle, starting with Steve Bannon, began to spend time in Budapest.

Even when Joe Biden came to power, that closeness didn’t wane. Orban kept a distance from official Washington, preferring the sanctum of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

This history matters, because in Hungary’s general election on April 12, Orban—Trump’s mentor, disciple, outrider—could be ejected after 16 consecutive years as prime minister (he also served four further years prior to that). Thanks to stagnant growth, deteriorating public services, and ever-entrenched corruption, Orban is losing his luster. Opinion polls show that the party formed by his chief opponent, Peter Magyar, has roughly a 10-point lead—though with several weeks of campaigning left, few expect the outcome to be as clear-cut as that.

The result will have huge repercussions for the war in Ukraine, for Europe, and for ultranationalism around the world. MAGA is alive to the danger of losing one of its prized assets and is pondering its next step. Should it do more to prop him up? Should Trump himself pay a stump visit?

Credit where it’s due: To turn a country of fewer than 10 million people, with an obscure language and economy the size of a medium-sized U.S. state, into a geostrategic pivot is some achievement. Orban is now a favorite not just of Trump, but of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, too.

He is also the scourge-in-chief of the European Union, doing all he can to undermine it, thereby fulfilling one of the key goals set out in the U.S. administration’s National Security Strategy. Central to Orban’s message is war: Ukraine, not Russia, is the problem. On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the war, Orban made one of his most confrontational decisions yet, blocking a fresh sanctions package against Russia, and ensuring that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other EU officials would turn up in Kyiv empty-handed. EU governments responded with fury. Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said Orban had “managed to create a climate of hostility towards the victim of aggression, and … now is trying to exploit that in the general election.”

Offline and online, the ruling Fidesz party’s messaging is relentless. Every few yards in cities, towns, and villages, billboards display posters depicting a small cabal who would enslave Hungary. One is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Another is von der Leyen. A third is Manfred Weber, the leader of the center-right EPP grouping in the European Parliament—hardly a household name. But it helps to have Germans in cahoots with Ukrainians. Alongside them is Magyar, who is portrayed as in their pocket. High-production videos posted online depict sons and wives crying as they await the man of the house, who has been sent to war to fight in the service of Ukraine thanks to the perfidious West.

Orban is doing everything he can to cling to power. Pensioners, large families, and other groups that form his base have been given extra payments and tax breaks. Single-member constituencies, which account for just over half of the 199 parliamentary seats, have been gerrymandered to favor Fidesz. According to various studies of the 2018 election, clientelism was common practice in small towns and villages. The measures included bussing in ethnic Hungarians from abroad, especially from the Zakarpattia region of western Ukraine, or the offering to voters of a “bonus” of up to 10,000 forint ($30) for casting their ballot “patriotically.”

Fidesz’s state capture is almost complete. The government has changed the rules to ensure that its appointees will survive any possible election defeat. The presidency, state audit commission, electoral commission, the constitutional courts, universities and the wider education sector, and the media are firmly in Orban’s grip. That would change only if Magyar won a two-thirds supermajority—something Orban currently enjoys—allowing incumbents to make sweeping constitutional reforms. That is considered unlikely.

Pro-government influencers are now highly valued—a large group of them were invited to accompany Orban on his jet during a recent visit to Washington. They return the favor by producing memes and other content showing how Magyar and his Tisza party would sell out Hungary’s interests. Meanwhile, news websites produced “exclusives” such as Ukrainian bomb threats on local schools—which didn’t stand up to subsequent scrutiny.

The most recent “bombshell” was a government announcement that it was ready to publish a “sex video” involving Magyar. They then produced a black and white photo, which seemed to have come from a security camera, and which Magyar himself involved him having consensual sex with a consensual adult woman. In other words, nothing to see here. His camp is wondering what might be conjured up. Other kompromat—to use an old Soviet word—is believed to be getting prepared against Tisza candidates in the dozen or so seats that could swing the outcome. Orban doesn’t need to call in Russian propaganda or methods. He is a past master himself.

While the standard of living was steadily increasing, during much of the 2010s, concern about the clientelism around the Orban circle tended to be shrugged off. Since the pandemic, the going has gotten harder, and with that a wider dissatisfaction with the way the country is being governed. Magyar’s lines of attack have therefore focused on the economy, the quality of services—and corruption.

Orban steadfastly avoids these themes, focusing instead on immigration, the battle against “gender ideology,” and the fear of war. Two contrasting ideologies are presented to Hungarian voters: Orban is inviting them to choose between “the Brussels path”—LGBT rights, money for Ukraine, the unfettered arrival of millions of migrants—or the Hungarian path. That is not a million miles away from the land of decent (white) Christian, family-oriented folk outlined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his speech earlier this month at the Munich Security Conference.

Rubio made a point of visiting Hungary and (similarly minded but less strategically important) Slovakia immediately after Munich. He lavished praise on Orban, making clear that Trump would support his “friend.” Yet for all the rhetoric, the U.S. administration has been more circumspect. Hungary has not been supplied with the same large-scale credits as were given to Argentina. Insofar as Trump is thinking about Europe at all, his attention appears to be turning toward Poland, ahead of elections in the fall of 2027 that could see the far-right Law and Justice return to power, and particularly to France, where in just over a year the ultraconservative National Rally could finally take over. Slovenia is heading in that direction; the Czech Republic has just reelected right-wing nationalists, and in Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, Trump has his favorite.

“Trump’s calculation might be: Is he prepared to risk backing a losing horse?” said Peter Kreko, a senior associate at the CEU Democracy Institute, a Budapest think tank. “Would he fly all this way just to see his man lose? This presupposes that Orban will lose, which is anything but a foregone conclusion,” Kreko added. “Expect fierce election battles and many dirty tricks.”

Many observers worry that Orban might refuse to leave office, claiming he was cheated out of victory. This is not impossible. What’s more likely is that he would spend the four to six weeks that the outgoing parliament is likely to continue to sit, in which his two-thirds majority allows him to make constitutional changes, to reinforce his parallel levers of power.

He would then, with the help of Trump and Putin, do all he could to undermine Magyar, to make a rapprochement with Brussels politically dangerous, and wait his turn again, as a hamstrung administration flounders. Just as has happened elsewhere in Europe. Just as happened in the United States.

No matter what happens in April, Orban might end up down, but certainly not out.