Not that kind of election fraud
Many anti-government voters eagerly await April 12, 2026, as the day of salvation. At the same time, they cannot shake off their fear of Fidesz rigging the election anyway. It is normal for people to have conflicting feelings and thoughts, but it is important to realize which fears are well-founded and which ones we can let go of.
There are still plenty of anti-Orbán voters who are still convinced that the 2018 election results were "hacked." The National Election Office's (NVI) newly developed website could not handle the traffic on election day, started to glitch, and then became unavailable. In addition, long queues formed at several polling stations, meaning that even hours after the polls had closed, the results were still trickling in. Late in the evening, the system suddenly delivered the final result: Fidesz had secured a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly for the third consecutive time. Many people thought that the NVI's vote-counting software had obviously been tampered with during the shutdown. Like most conspiracy theories, this one may appear plausible at first glance, but it has no grounding in reality.
On the election day
First of all, the system did not crash, only the data reporting interface could not handle the load, but even that is irrelevant. Even if NVI's entire IT system had actually crashed and could not be revived for days, it would not have affected the vote counting. This is because the Hungarian electoral process is 100 percent paper-based: votes are counted at polling stations, and the results are recorded in a protocol, a copy of which is given to all members of the relevant vote-counting committee. The same data is also posted on the NVI website; the data available there and in the minutes can be easily compared. If we consider this single fact, the idea of hacking the IT system becomes meaningless. Whatever they might have tampered with, the opposition members of the polling stations or the parties that delegated them would have immediately exposed it. It is true that not all polling stations had opposition delegates in 2018, but where they did, there were only a few reports of discrepancies between the data on the website and in the minutes, and these were quickly corrected. There is therefore no need to worry about tampering with the central software.
A more realistic fear is that the election will be rigged at the polling stations. There is no doubt that the Orbán regime is diligently copying Russia, where Vladimir Putin has been "forced" to supplement his support with falsified ballots stuffed into the ballot boxes for several elections now. Although we are taking giant steps in this direction, Hungary is not there yet. The domestic registers are kept meticulously by the electoral offices and the members of the vote counting committees, who have conflicting interests. constantly monitor each other. The printed ballots must be counted one by one, so it is impossible for a large number of forged ballots to be placed in the ballot boxes on behalf of voters who do not exist or who did not show up at the polling stations. It is important that in 2022 there were at least two opposition delegates in each polling station, and there will be again next year, which is a necessary condition for preventing mass electoral fraud.
So, is there nothing to see and, to paraphrase Leibniz, "are the Hungarian elections the fairest of all possible elections"? Not at all. In order to clearly see the phenomena that actually distort electoral competition, we first had to make it clear how fraud is not committed in Hungary.
Staying with the polling stations, there is no doubt that abuse has always taken place. The vast majority of these cases can actually be traced back to social problems. As long as poverty, vulnerability, and hopelessness define the daily lives of plenty of people, there will always be a political force that will force those affected to sell their voting rights. It is hopeless to try to combat this phenomenon with law enforcement measures. Better results can be achieved through education and awareness-raising, but the best way to prevent it would be to alleviate poverty (utopia: eliminate it). Until we start moving in this direction, elections will always be overshadowed by vote buying; at most, the methods – from chain voting to photographing ballot papers to forcing people to vote openly – will become more sophisticated, and the incentives – ranging from sacks of potatoes to a few thousand forints in cash to threats of exclusion from public work programs – will cover a wide spectrum. Although this is not exclusively a Hungarian phenomenon, and it did not emerge in Hungary after 2010, it has become increasingly organized from election to election under the Orbán regime. The party headquarters expects each constituency president to deliver a certain number of votes, which they try to collect from mayors and other local leaders. If they have no chance of doing so by fair means, the simplest option is to make dishonest offers to the most vulnerable people. Since most vote buying remains hidden by its very nature, we can only estimate how many people can be swayed in this way in an election. There will certainly be cases in 2026, but they are unlikely to have a decisive influence on the election.
Party, state
It is not a big leap from vote buying to pre-election handouts. In fact, the same logic applies, only on a much larger scale, not locally but nationally, and – on paper – legally. Those in power use public resources to keep themselves exactly where they are. It is true that in flourishing democracies it is common practice to time the handover of major investments, for example, to coincide with the pre-election period. However, the scale of this is dramatic in the case of the Orbán governments. According to conservative estimates by the G7 portal, the amount planned to be spent in 2026 alone will amount to 1.7-1.8 percent of GDP, and further announcements may still be forthcoming. Even though opinions are divided on the ability of handouts to translate into votes, it is an unfair advantage for Fidesz to spend public money on such a scale for the sake of its re-election.
The intertwining of the state and the party is even more striking in the public. Giant posters in most towns constantly trumpet the current government's messages. The takeover of the media over the past decade and a half (which brought unexpected twists and turns even this fall) has given the government an overwhelming advantage: the state media conglomerate was brought under control in a matter of moments, and only one (or one and a half) TV channels remained relatively fair in their coverage of public affairs. Critical voices have almost completely disappeared from the radio, county newspapers have been completely shut down, and there is only one daily newspaper that does not echo government propaganda The situation is somewhat better in the weekly newspaper market. There has also been a huge expansion of government control in the online media, but as a result of the backlash, a number of new, independent media outlets with significant reach have managed to become players in the market. Civic awareness has also grown considerably: more and more people are willing to support these channels through subscriptions and donations.
The storming of social media began a step later, after the 2019 municipal elections, which brought partial success for the opposition. Megafon, in collaboration with the Civil Union (CÖF), which also features prominently in public advertising, have become key channels for government communication by 2022.
It is worth recalling some data that shows that the abuse of power and public funds, which gives Fidesz a huge competitive advantage, does not take place on election day, nor primarily during the official election campaign period. In the six months leading up to the 2024 European Parliament and local elections, Political Capital monitored how much Hungarian political actors spent on political advertising on Meta and Google platforms (mostly on Facebook and YouTube). The government spent 2.14 billion forints, while all of its competing opposition challengers combined spent only about a quarter of that, 544 million. But Fidesz is not just spending money on advertising by domestic standards. On Google, Hungary’s ruling party ranked as the number one advertiser across all EU member states in the five months before last year’s election. Fidesz paid for five (!) of the eight most expensive videos during a period when election campaigns were taking place in all 27 member states at the same time.
There were no national elections in Hungary in 2025, yet the appetite for advertising did not wane. Even before Meta and Google pulled out of the political advertising market this fall, they received a total of 4.1 billion forints from Hungarian advertisers between January 1 and September 27. No less than 87 percent of this amount was spent by government-controlled actors (3.6 billion), while the remaining 13 percent (approximately 500 million forints) was shared among all other parties, their politicians, all non-government-controlled media outlets, all actual civil society organizations, and all other actors that are difficult to categorize.
The amounts spent on advertising are important because it is rare to find reliable data that accurately describes the dominance that the government enjoys. For example, we have no information about how much money was spent on media purchases or how much it costs to operate the hundreds of platforms manually controlled by the government communications center on a daily basis. The amounts paid to Google and Meta for political advertising are certainly loose change in comparison, but they at least make the government's considerable dominance quantifiable. More precisely, they did, because since October, it has no longer been possible to place political advertisements with either tech giant, at least in theory. Several members of the government openly admit that they are trying to outsmart the algorithms, and it is clear that they often succeed. More importantly, the prime minister's campaign team is prepared for the post-advertising period, partly thanks to the Fight Club and the Digital Civic Circles, which are independent from the ruling party on paper.
With this arsenal, the government has become capable of bending reality, even before the advent of fake videos created with artificial intelligence. Politics has never been a field of honesty, but a few years ago, various political attacks could only work if they had at least a minimal basis in reality. Today, this is no longer necessary; political opponents can be attacked with completely fabricated accusations if they are repeated intensively enough across multiple channels. This degree of control over the public sphere, which is light-years away from the fair requirements of electoral competition, provides the government with a further unfair advantage.
Added to this are such significant details as the often-cited distortions of the electoral system. These are not the effects that strengthen the winner, as they may even favor the current opposition, but among many other things, regulations that discriminate against Hungarians living abroad (some can vote by mail, while others can only vote at diplomatic missions), the serious anomalies of postal voting itself (in 2026, postal packages can still be sent to the addresses of thousands of deceased people), the candidate nomination system based on data copying, the campaign financing system that encourages the proliferation of fake parties, the easily captured ethnic mandate, and the manipulated constituency map – all provide Fidesz with an unfair advantage (or at least can do so in certain electoral situations). Not to mention that the ruling party, with its two-thirds majority in parliament, can still amend the electoral laws. Whether they do so or not, no one other than Fidesz can know for sure what rules will apply to the elections in April.
The data theft case is relevant here for several reasons. Not only did those who stole the data of hundreds of thousands of voters from the Tisza Világ app in an unclear manner commit a crime, but so did those who used and disseminated it in the public eye. No information is available about the identity of the former perpetrators, but the latter has been and continues to be committed by a multitude of government-controlled media outlets, proxy organizations, and opinion makers, apparently with the utmost peace of mind. They hardly need to fear being called to account by the authorities – another not insignificant factor that unjustifiably strengthens the government's position.
Not a foregone conclusion
Last but not least, the Orbán regime, which is extremely sensitive to its sovereignty on a rhetorical level, can also count on strong external support. Both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have openly stated that they would like to see Viktor Orbán remain in the prime minister's seat after the election. Beyond kind words, a possible visit to Budapest, and a vague financial agreement (if it exists at all), the American president is unlikely to invest much in an Eastern European country of marginal importance to him. The Russian president, on the other hand, will. It is not yet clear what form this will take, but if anyone, it is Putin who has a real interest in keeping his most prominent ally in the EU in power.
So, there is nothing to see here, as the ruling party has already secured this election for itself? Not at all. As we can see from the reliable opinion polls, Fidesz has fallen behind despite its indescribable dominance. A new opposition force has emerged, and although such a scenario is certainly on the table, the Karmelita is not the Kremlin and will not ban it. This is because it would face a degree of street resistance that Hungarian security forces are not equipped to handle.
If the opposition did not believe that power could be removed through elections, it would not be preparing for elections, but for something much more radical. The conditions of the contest and the circumstances are clearly far from fair, but based on what we know today, the election due in April could still have a winner other than Fidesz.
Róbert László
(This article was originally published in the Hungarian weekly Magyar Narancs on 17 December 2025.)
