Viktor Orbán has conceded in a speech to supporters, telling them: “The result of the election is clear and painful.”
I assume by “painful” he means “delightful”.
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And a victory for proportional representation too. A small outsider party gets its full percentage representation. 2 party systems like the US and UK get bogged down with 2 bad main parties that just get worse. You can’t get past them no matter how bad they are. Real democracy is not like that. Don’t stand for half democracy.
I agree with your general vibe but it’s worth noting that this was semi-proportional.
Hungary uses Mixed-Member Majoritarian, so the constituency seats do not influence the proportional seats. Mixed-Member Proportional generally attempts to make the final seat count match the list vote as close as possible, whereas in MMM, it’s almost as if the constituency seats and list seats are for two separate-but-parallel elections.
To put this in perspective, Tisza (the winning party) got 53% of the list vote, but nearly 70% of the seats (which is even more significant because in Hungary, you need 67% of the seats in their unicameral parliament to amend the constitution). MMP would have not awarded such a large majority; they would have got about 106 seats instead of 138.
Again, big fan of proportional representation, and while Hungary’s system is technically better than what we have here in the UK (unless you’re Scottish, Welsh, Norther Irish, or a Londoner), it’s not really a good example of PR.
The name confused me for a bit ngl.
MAGA won in Hungary?!?
The new Hungarian president is named Magyar? As in Hungarian? Who wrote this Episode?
“Hungary Peter” in Hungarian, basically. Let’s hope the Democrats find “USA John” soon.
I’m honestly surprised that the fat man cust conceded. I was convinced there would be some type of shenanigangs or at least an attempt at crying about foul play or “outside interference” by the evil EU/Ukraine/Soros…
Indeed. I was surprised by that as well and would be curious to know the reason for it. I take it, that his grip of state power was not total enough to just ignore such a devastating election mandate against him. But he conceded already before even much of the votes were even counted. Even in functioning democracies we had for example Schröder who was trying to cling to power like a dictator but was trashed within days for doing so.
I can think of several reasons. Maybe in Orbans morphed reality he was indeed a man of the people and his almost total media domination convinced himself of his own lies. Seeing the election result maybe he was authentically shocked and hit by the reality check. More likely might be that Orban is retreating now without resistance to give the floor to his opponent, knowing that the situation of Hungary is challenging, he might plan to get back to power next elections, after possibly unpopular, necessary, reforms by Tisza. He might be playing the long game. Or maybe he just calls his losses collects the fortune he stole from the Hungarian people (and European citizens at large as well) and prepares his retirement in Russia with all that fortune.
probably harder to rig the election, or call it rigged? because they might actually investigate it.
A great day for Europe. One of Putins most valuable assets in the EU has fallen. Also, I don’t think the Hungarian democracy would have survived another Orban term.
orbans going to have a very bad meeting with PUTIN.
I just can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of ruse to replace the burned Orban with someone new and charismatic, he was one of Orbans after all
No need to be paranoid straight away. I will judge Magyar by his actions.
Yeah, I do feel kinda tinfoil hatty about it. Guess I’m just jaded, let’s see what they will do now that theyve won
His party became popular within two years. When Putin did it with his party there were enough people who pointed out that it was not organic.
After all, his last name literally means ‘Hungarian’, it doesn’t get more sovereign than that. Otherwise it would be like if James USA turned out to be a foreign asset.
I share the same gut feeling, maybe I have just grown cynical after everything that happened since Covid times.
There was a suspicion of that in Hungary as well, but after the last 2 years, most people highly doubt it.
I just hope Magyar isnt a shadow puppet. Or a massive ball that gets dropped and deflated like Starmer.
A great day for Hungary and Europe. Fingers crossed now for the coming months.
Is it possible Belarus could also follow suit?
Belarus isn’t forced to have a functional democracy like Hungary is through EU. Which is one of the great benefits of the EU. He wouldn’t have anything to say, neither recieve any of the benefits from the EU, while Hungary was under investigation of corrupt democracy and also, could potentially be thrown out.
Since Belarus is a puppet state of Russia, and not a part of the union. Nothing, holds back the belarussian government to not just fake the democratic process, just like Putler does in his own shit country.
Is it possible Belarus could also follow suit?
Belarus hasn’t had a technically democratic regime for 16 years, but a straight up dictator for 32 (there’s never been an election in the country he didn’t “win”). And it’s in an economic and defense union with Russia (integrated even closer than EU countries are with each other). That’s a whole different league.
of course he’s won them all. he’s that good.
let me finish. at cheating.
Shame. So revolution or nothing basically? Or perhaps when the leader (I forget his name…Lukchencko?) dies?
Usually when a long-time dictator dies he picked a successor. They are not always succesful at continuing the dictatorship but i don’t expect the country to suddenly return to democracy when Lukashenko dies. Would be really really nice though.
Thank you Vance for tipping the scale.
Right?
Are these right wing politicians living in their own bubble or am I? Why would anyone want to be associated with the US administration in general and Vance in particular at this time? Who looks at this and thinks “oh, the venerable vice president of the United States endorses this guy, surely I’ll give him my vote”?
There have been about 0 good news from the US in the last year. If I were a politician I’d distance myself from that trainwreck so hard
Judging by the election results, I don’t think it’s you in the bubble.
I mean, it could be both.
Canada went through this a year ago. Our Liberal government was sinking under controversies of their own making and the right-wing Conservatives were on track for a big win. Then the Americans started blathering on with their 51st state bullshit and completely wiped out the Conservative lead, and their bootlicking leader lost his own seat in the general election.
Of course, Milhouse was simply handed a free seat elsewhere in the country so that he can continue to be a smarmy piece of three-word-slogan shit. At least O’Toole knew when he was finished.
Milhouse is still changing Trump’s nappy, doing media tours with Joe Rogan. Pierre Poilievre represents hard working Americans while over 40 of his MPs are trying to cross the floor to Carney.
He is a parasite, why even thank him.
Congratulations to Hungary and also to Ukraine.
The REALLY good thing is that Magyar get super majority, so he can undo the undemocratic things Orban did in his attempt to stay in power.
Hopefully democratic principles will be restored in Hungary now. And Hungary can participate constructively in EU again, and receive the full benefits of being an EU member.
Wait and see. He’s centre-right and used to be in the same party.
That is normalization of the extreme right; people feel like a centre-right candidate is leftist. Social engineering at its best. Well at least he is pro EU so in your face Putin.
He was running on wealth taxes and progressive income taxes and much stronger welfare policies though. As well as term limits.
Exactly this! Just hope he is willing to talk with zelenskjy and won’t be blocking EU aid in terms of agreenment of energy protection for his citizens ofc. I mean, EU also have some interest in keeping hungarys wheels spinning, since they are going to produce batteries and such.
Seems like he would be willing to work with EU on this, he supports independency from Russia in terms of energy and is pro EU. Ofcourse it wouldn’t be the first time a center candidate goes in the opposite direction to their campaign promises if he doesn’t (or actually any candidate for that matter).
unlikely, he has many of the same policies and as mentioned is centre right, he’s not as obnoxious as Orban but only just. He was an Orban protégé for a time.
It’s not like Hungary went centre left or something.
If he claims to be pro Europe it follows that he will follow EU regulation. And that means he must reverse a lot of shit Orban did that undermines democracy.
But we will see what happens.
Hope things work out better moving forward for Hungary than they had been.
It really did take them long enough.
Glad it happened, but why were there so many stupid people keeping him in power?
I don’t really know but my first guess would be bribes and propaganda from the Russian oil & gas industry, a.k.a. Putin.
he needs his rubles elsewhere now. but that’s the nice thing with corrupt governments, as soon as people are not getting paid any more shit goes downhill.
Looking forward to hear JD Vance comment Magyar win.
Not expecting anything from djt
Hooray. A legjobbakat kívánom magyar fivéreimnek és nővéreimnek
Here’s to hoping for a shift in the Hungarian Overton Window such that the new guy will in a few years be outvoted from the left.
Define left. He ran on wealth taxes, no income taxes on minimal wage and reining in corporations. Not much further “left” of him, at least by policy right now as I could see.
His party is a member of the EPP. How do I define “left”? Anything to the left of the EPP would do for now.
I’m glad that Orban is out but it’s not like Hungary just elected Zohran Magyardani.
His job is not to reform the EU, his job is to fix Hungary. For that, he needs to normalise relations with the EU, or the country is going bankrupt in months.
The party which would have been with the social democrats in the EPP has managed to erode workers rights and introduce austerity while their politicians were getting rich off of public funds.
I’ll take a renewables focused climate policy, less corporate welfare, and generally better social services funded by wealth taxes and reclaimed national wealth from the rich over saying the right things in Brussels.
At least to me, workers should matter more to the left than party colours or performative bullshit.
In all sincerity, I wish you and Hungary all the best.
Magyardani heh.
he is the new left, thanks to normalization of extreme right
YAY!
Rejoice!
