Despite heavily tilting the electoral playing field in its favor—through extreme gerrymandering, extensive use of state resources for partisan ends, near-total media dominance, flagrant use of deepfake videos, and alleged vote-buying—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing, historic defeat in the country’s election Sunday.

Orban conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent, Tisza Party leader Peter Magyar, pledging to “serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition as well.” Voter turnout was higher than in any previous parliamentary election in Hungary since the collapse of communism in 1989.

Despite heavily tilting the electoral playing field in its favor—through extreme gerrymandering, extensive use of state resources for partisan ends, near-total media dominance, flagrant use of deepfake videos, and alleged vote-buying—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing, historic defeat in the country’s election Sunday.

Orban conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent, Tisza Party leader Peter Magyar, pledging to “serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition as well.” Voter turnout was higher than in any previous parliamentary election in Hungary since the collapse of communism in 1989.

After 16 years of Fidesz rule, what explains this startling reversal?

When entrenched, dominant-party regimes are ousted from office, it typically stems from either the incumbent’s accumulated missteps or the opposition’s scrappy resourcefulness. In Hungary, both dynamics were at play.

Fidesz entered the election burdened by three major liabilities. First, its recent economic record has been terrible. Years of fiscal mismanagement, state-capture economics, and erosion of the  rule of law left Hungary mired in anemic economic growth, hovering around 0.5 percent last year. Compounding this was a surge of inflation in 2022 and 2023 that peaked at 25 percent, the highest in the European Union at the time.

Second, the government’s stewardship of core public services has been widely viewed as inadequate. Hungary’s state health care system is emblematic: Almost all Hungarians depend on it, yet frustration runs deep over deteriorating hospital infrastructure; persistent shortages of doctors and nurses (many of whom have left for Austria, Germany, and elsewhere in the European Union); and long wait times for care. Hungary has one of the lowest life expectancies in the EU, more than four years below the bloc’s average.

Third, corruption has become endemic. According to Transparency International, Hungary is tied for the most corrupt country in the EU, alongside Bulgaria; globally, it is ranked among the likes of Cuba and Burkina Faso. A steady stream of credible investigative reports detailing the misuse of public resources by officials and their families—including, allegedly, Orban’s father and son-in-law—became increasingly difficult for Fidesz to dismiss or deflect.

Taken together, these liabilities produced widespread socioeconomic decay, and the stability that Fidesz once delivered had soured into stagnation and a national pessimism.

Unable to campaign on improving Hungarians’ quality of life, Fidesz’s campaign leaned heavily on fearmongering, much of it centered on conspiracy theories about Ukraine. Fantastical claims about Ukraine planning military actions against Hungary and financing the opposition substituted for any positive campaign messages or tangible accomplishments.

As illiberal strongmen have discovered in other contexts—such as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s 2022 defeat—after a while, voters, especially moderates, become exhausted by constant messages of fear, hatred, and vituperation. Moreover, Orban’s frequent claims of protecting Hungary’s sovereignty rang increasingly hollow to critics as Hungary became a pawn in Russia’s foreign-policy plays and a doormat for Chinese economic interests.

On the side of the opposition, Magyar and his allies succeeded where previous challengers had failed by building a new playbook to counter Fidesz.

First, Magyar eschewed culture-war combat on hot-button issues such as immigration and LGBTQ rights and focused instead on delivering a positive message to voters. Magyar (whose last name conveniently means “Hungarian”) reclaimed patriotism as an inclusive, forward-looking idea, challenging Fidesz on terrain that it has traditionally dominated. Recognizing voters’ exhaustion with ideological back and forth, he called on Hungarians to believe in a more “humane” Hungary and offered them hope for renewed national pride. He also hammered relentlessly on corruption, tying it to the glaring governance dysfunctions that plague everyday life in the country.

Second, he expanded the opposition’s geographic reach. Breaking from the traditional left-liberal focus on urban, educated voters, Magyar campaigned extensively outside Budapest, visiting countless small towns and minor cities to challenge Fidesz on its home electoral ground. He even led a multiday march to Romania to connect with ethnic Hungarians living there, who have long been a solid pro-Fidesz bloc.

Third, he demonstrated agility in his use of social media. Shut out of traditional media, Magyar used Facebook and Instagram to communicate directly with voters. His simple but clever posts made Fidesz’s messaging look clunky and out-of-date. He also proved adept at anticipating and defusing Fidesz’s smear campaigns, often preempting his opponents’ attacks. A widely viewed early video interview, in which he explained his 2023 break with Fidesz and his critiques of the government, proved devastatingly effective—attracting more than a 2.5 million views in a country of under 10 million people.

With striking energy and determination, Magyar and his team were able to upend the dynamics of previous contests—a fact that many observers in the United States, especially in conservative circles, were slow to recognize.

Although Hungary and the United States differ in many respects, their political lives have been uniquely linked in recent years as U.S. President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement have venerated Orban and eagerly cultivated links between the two countries’ conservative political spheres. During the campaign, Trump openly supported Orban, twice offering a “complete and total endorsement,” and sending U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance to Budapest shortly before the vote in a last-ditch effort to bolster Fidesz’s flagging campaign.

Because of this linkage, Hungary’s watershed election offers lessons both for the MAGA movement and for the Democrats who plan to run against it.

For Trump and his allies, Hungary’s outcome underscores the limits of culture-war combat as a sustained political strategy for a governing party. Voters ultimately look beyond performative messaging for real improvements in their daily lives. At the same time, corruption—especially when tied to a leader, his family, and close associates—is political poison, slow-acting but deadly.

For Trump’s opponents, the lessons are equally clear: They should not be afraid to challenge a populist movement on its home turf of patriotism and nationalism. But candidates will need to embrace new, broadly appealing ideas and campaign beyond the comfort zone of urban voter strongholds. They should also press on nonideological, hot-button issues, such as corruption and health care costs, which have better payoff than traditional ideological topics. Finally, they must continue to embrace new social media methods that connect with young voters.

In short, both sides should take careful note of how a once-vigorous, self-confident populist movement, seemingly holding all the political cards, fell so decisively—and how a new opposition overcame a pattern of fecklessness and division to prevail.