Hungary Election: Orbán’s Total Defeat

I was a 19-year-old College Republican when Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election. That night was a combination of unexpected glee among conservatives who had long dreamed of remaking America and unexpected shock among an establishment that had thought it was invincible. Replace Reagan with Tisza leader Péter Magyar and the liberal elite with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz establishment, and you will understand what has happened in Hungary.

Orbán’s defeat was total. At present, his party leads in only 13 of the country’s 106 single-member districts, and it will probably lose a couple of those as the final votes from expats are counted. It lost the party list vote in Hungary by more than 17 points just four years after winning it by more than 16. America has not seen a 33-point shift in the presidential margin since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic 1932 landslide.

About the Author

Henry Olsen

Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of The Working-Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.

Featured Tags

I was a 19-year-old College Republican when Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election. That night was a combination of unexpected glee among conservatives who had long dreamed of remaking America and unexpected shock among an establishment that had thought it was invincible. Replace Reagan with Tisza leader Péter Magyar and the liberal elite with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz establishment, and you will understand what has happened in Hungary.

Orbán’s defeat was total. At present, his party leads in only 13 of the country’s 106 single-member districts, and it will probably lose a couple of those as the final votes from expats are counted. It lost the party list vote in Hungary by more than 17 points just four years after winning it by more than 16. America has not seen a 33-point shift in the presidential margin since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic 1932 landslide.

About the Author

Henry Olsen

Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of The Working-Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.