Hungary Holds Parliamentary Election That Could End Viktor Orbán's 16-Year Rule

Hungary held a parliamentary election on Sunday to determine the composition of its 199-seat parliament. The vote pits Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party, in power for 16 years, against challenger Péter Magyar's Tisza party. Polls from three major Hungarian pollsters show Tisza holding a significant lead.

Voting occurred from 06:00 to 19:00 local time (04:00 to 17:00 GMT). Results began emerging in the evening. The election features 106 directly elected constituency seats and 93 seats allocated by party lists, with votes from Hungarians abroad included in the lists.

addressed supporters in Budapest on Saturday evening, stating his party would achieve a victory that will surprise everyone, perhaps even ourselves.

" Supporters chanted "we won't let that happen". One supporter said she backed his policies on protecting the family and particularly on the war in Ukraine. Magyar, who formed a grassroots party after splitting from the ruling Fidesz party, attracted far greater numbers to his final rally in the second city Debrecen than Orbán in Budapest.

Magyar appealed to voters not to give in to "Fidesz pressure and blackmail". Tisza party is promising "a change of regime", a reset of relations with the European Union and an end to close relations with Russia.

The system transfers excess votes from constituency winners and losers to national lists, which has often benefited Fidesz.

Parties need 5% of the national vote to get into parliament. Viktor Orbán has admitted the electoral system has benefited his party. Hungary's three most reliable pollsters are all pointing to a "huge lead" for Magyar's Tisza party, says election specialist Róbert László at Budapest think tank Political Capital.

The most likely scenario is that Tisza will have a comfortable, absolute majority, but not a two-thirds majority. But you can't exclude a two-thirds majority either, says László. Magyar has told voters they need not just an absolute majority of 100 seats in the 199-seat parliament, but a two-thirds super-majority, to wind back many of the constitutional changes that Fidesz made to the independence of the judiciary, ownership of the media, and many other walks of life.

In recent days, there have been figures from the police, military and business who have all spoken out against Fidesz, and László believes this is a sign that the public mood has turned against Orbán. One of the few pollsters that suggests he can still win is Nézőpont Institute, whose head Ágoston Mráz points to 22 so-called "battleground seats" out of the total 106 constituencies.

If Fidesz were to win those seats, he foresees a potential victory. However, as 5% of the votes in those seats will not be counted immediately, it could take several days for the final result to become clear. He also argues that Fidesz voters may not be as loud as their Tisza counterparts.

Hungary is repeatedly at the bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

The economy is struggling, and he has been buffeted by a series of scandals, including revelations that Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó regularly spoke to his Russian counterpart before and after European Union summits, which he has admitted. Orbán has vetoed €90bn (£78bn) in aid to Ukraine, angering his European partners.

If Magyar is to win, Tisza will need to defeat Fidesz in some important towns and cities, not least Hungary's sixth-biggest city, Győr, close to the Slovak border in the north-west. Orbán himself put Győr on the campaign map last month when he noticeably lost his cool towards booing protesters and accused them of "pushing Ukrainian interests".

Conversely, Magyar hosted a very large rally in a central square in Győr last Thursday. Gergely Német, a 20-year-old student who said he was going to the square with his mother, explained that as a family they had struggled financially because of government policy.

Although mothers with two or more children have increasingly become exempt from income tax under Orbán's pro-family policies, not everyone has benefited. Like many first-time voters who talked to the BBC, Német said his main priority was defeating Fidesz: "I think it's not the man, Péter Magyar, who's most important.

For the past two years Győr has had an independent mayor and deputy mayor, but Fidesz still has a majority on the local council. "I know what Fidesz brings, I know what Fidesz does, I live in it," says Deputy Mayor Roland Kósa, who speaks of an arrogance towards power.

Although Magyar forged his political career as a centre-right conservative under Orbán, he dramatically turned on his party two years ago, and now attracts voters from across the political spectrum. That has enabled voters who might not like him as a person to hold their noses in the knowledge that they are voting for a broad-based movement.

Magyar made a conscious decision not to ally with other parties, choosing to create his Tisza party from the ground up, by creating "Tisza-islands" - often small groups of activists in a sea of Fidesz strongholds.

This is not a normal climax to a European election. The two leaders are not taking part in a televised election debate, instead it is being fought on social media and in town squares. Outwardly Fidesz officials say they remain confident of victory, although political chief Balázs Orbán suggested that if that happens the opposition will not accept defeat.

Ágoston Mráz also voices concerns that Tisza voters will not accept an Orbán victory and will claim there has been election fraud: "I'm really afraid of getting violence on the streets because tension is in the air.

Hungary is not just in the EU, it is in Nato too, but Orbán has vetoed €90bn (£78bn) in aid to Ukraine, angering his European partners.