A youth-led push for change threatens Orbán’s 16-year rule in Hungary’s elections

A group of friends in their mid-20s campaigned door-to-door in a small Hungarian city last week, supporting a political movement that could soon bring an end to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power.

Young men in Hungary’s Lake Balaton region were volunteering for the centre-right Tisza party and its leader Péter Magyar, campaigning to overcome what they described as Orbán’s corrupt system.

“We’ve lived within this system all our lives and we want to see what it could be like outside of it,” said 25-year-old student Florián Végh. “On behalf of my friends and colleagues at university, I can say that this system is absolutely dysfunctional.”

While Hungary’s young people overwhelmingly push for an end to Orbán’s autocratic rule, the generation gap is widening as the oldest citizens remain loyal to the prime minister; This division could be a decisive factor in the April 12 elections.

Orbán, 62, is trailing in the polls just behind Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer who left Orbán’s nationalist-populist Fidesz party due to a political scandal in 2024. Magyar led Tisza on a rapid political ascent, inspiring a constituency that had largely stayed away from politics for at least two decades.

The decline in Fidesz’s popularity during the economic recession, political scandals, and corruption scandals widened the demographic gap. A recent survey by pollster 21 Research Center found that 65% of voters under 30 support Tisza, while 14% support Orbán.

Changing of the guard

One of Tisza’s volunteers, 24-year-old student Levente Koltai, pointed out that Fidesz is the abbreviation for “Alliance of Young Democrats” in Hungarian. However, he thinks that the party no longer suits its name.

“Fidesz has lost its title as young, democratic and alliance,” he told the Associated Press. “From young to old, from democratic to dictatorial, from alliance to circle of friends.”

A changing of the guard is emerging in Hungary, where “a new, active political generation is beginning to develop before our eyes,” said Andrea Szabó, senior researcher at the Institute of Political Science at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

Although Orbán’s political generation was defined by its struggle against Hungary’s Soviet-era socialist system in the 1980s and 1990s, Szabó said “we have now reached the point, 25 years later, where a new political generation has emerged against the Orbán regime.”

‘Illiberal’ drifting towards Russia and China

Orbán’s government describes itself as both Christian national and “illiberal” and has alienated its European Union partners in favor of closer relations with Russia and China.

Long accused by critics of taking over Hungary’s institutions, restricting press freedom and overseeing deep-seated political corruption, Orbán has become an icon of the global far-right movement.

Fans approve of her opposition to immigration and restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights, and applaud benefits for young families, such as eliminating income taxes for mothers of multiple children and providing government-backed loans for first-time homebuyers.

In addition to such policies, pension support for retirees also attracts the attention of many elderly voters. Fidesz leads Tisza 50% to 19% among retirement-age Hungarians, according to the 21st Research Center Poll.

Pensioner Zsuzsanna Prépos said at one of Orbán’s final campaign rallies that she was “very happy” with the government’s pension policies and supported Fidesz because it “helps young people”.

“When I was young… I didn’t get anything. Now young people have a lot of help,” he said.

However, such measures did not translate into youth support for Orbán. In several recent speeches, he has both chastised young people for their anti-government stances and implored them to reconsider.

“Young people, wake up!” he said at a rally last week. “These are not the times to take risks, to experiment, to try new things. … Believe me, only Fidesz and me can ensure the security of this country today.”

Researcher Szabó said many young people viewed Orbán’s family support policies positively, but their “very strong sense of justice” was incompatible with “the authoritarian use of power, corruption, feeling vulnerable and insecurity in the country.”

“Their lives have essentially been spent entirely within the Orbán regime, so they know nothing other than this kind of working of power,” he said.

Tisza’s rise

Recent events in Hungary have led many young people to oppose the ruling party.

Hungary was rocked by scandal in February 2024 when it was revealed that the president, a close ally of Orbán, had pardoned his accomplice in the child sexual abuse case. This statement shocked the country and the president and justice minister resigned.

Days later, some of the country’s best-known influencers staged a protest demanding political transformation. Szabó said that this event, attended by tens of thousands of people, was a turning point that “opened the door to politicization for many young people.”

Following the amnesty scandal, Magyar left Fidesz and launched Tisza. Three months later the party won 30% of the vote in the European Parliament elections.

Magyar built his campaign on promises to end Orbán’s drift towards Russia, restore Hungary’s Western orientation and revive the stagnant economy by recovering billions of dollars of EU funds blocked over rule of law and corruption concerns.

This economic message resonated with young people. Végh, the Tisza volunteer, said it is easier than ever for his internet-savvy generation to access different forms of information and travel to nearby countries where governments put public money to good use.

“In Austria you see a society that is much calmer, more peaceful, more educated, with better roads and better healthcare,” he said. “When you cross the border you find yourself being dragged into a developed European country.”

Although Tisza is ahead in the polls, his victory is far from certain. Orbán leads in much of the countryside and among older voters.

At a recent rally in Budapest attended by 100,000 people, Tisza supporter Dorina Csobán said the electoral battle “has become quite divisive for the older people in my family, because we, the younger ones, have clearly said that there must be change.”