Medián’s latest survey has recorded a simultaneous movement in Hungary’s post-election party balance: the governing Tisza Party has slipped while Fidesz has recovered several points, although Péter Magyar’s party continues to hold an overwhelming lead.
The poll, conducted between 14 and 18 September, put Tisza at 54 per cent in the total population, down three points from July, while Fidesz rose by the same amount to 22 per cent. Among certain voters, Tisza stood at 64 per cent and Fidesz at 27 per cent. Hard-right Our Homeland remained essentially unchanged at 7–8 per cent. The margin of error was 3.1 per cent.
While the change is within that margin and seems insignificant at first glance, its configuration is nevertheless politically notable. Medián director Endre Hann said it would be premature to claim that the gap was genuinely closing, but suggested that some weakly attached former Fidesz voters may have returned, possibly because Viktor Orbán re-entered frontline politics after months of relative inactivity during the summer.
Orbán’s Pull Effect and Its Limits
Speaking at the annual Kötcse gathering on 12 September, the first such meeting in opposition in the past 16 years, Orbán definitively ended the uncertainty within Fidesz regarding questions of leadership and direction.
In his speech, Orbán declared that the period of self-reflection and assessment after the historic defeat must end and that Fidesz and its remaining network should focus on attacking the government instead. He identified economic conditions, broken election promises, and governing failures and incompetence as areas in which to attack Tisza.
Since Kötcse, Orbán has visibly become significantly more active than at any time in the post-election period, giving two long interviews and reacting to some domestic issues.
The message, however, has remained unchanged since April. Orbán identified ‘four lies’ behind Tisza’s landslide victory: the Göd battery plant controversy, an alleged paedophile scandal involving a senior government politician, corruption allegations against Fidesz, and Tisza’s economic promises. He described the new political system as a ‘neo-communist digital Soviet republic’ and accused Tisza of serving Brussels and preparing to hand Hungary’s energy, banking and telecommunications sectors back to foreign interests.
‘While Orbán has by far the highest approval rating among core voters, he is also the most rejected politician among the broader electorate’
The strategy is understandable from Fidesz’s perspective. As the polling suggests, Orbán is among the few, if not the only, figures serving as a potential pull factor for certain voters. That solves only the immediate challenge rather than the longer-term leadership dilemma, both within the party and on the broader Hungarian right.
Europion’s 7–8 September survey, conducted before the Kötcse speech, found that the proportion of respondents who would welcome Orbán in an important public role had risen from 28 to 31 per cent. By comparison, Fidesz parliamentary leader János Bóka stood at just 18 per cent. Meanwhile, Orbán also remained the country’s most rejected politician, with 47 per cent giving him the lowest possible rating.
That leads to a familiar problem: while Orbán has by far the highest approval rating among core voters, he is also the most rejected politician among the broader electorate, fundamentally limiting his ability to attract a significant share of voters. Orbán himself admitted at Kötcse that the party is currently far from achieving a social majority.
From Broken Promises to ‘Twitter Wars’
The timing of the latest Medián poll is equally important. Fieldwork ended on 18 September, immediately before an unusually difficult sequence of controversies for the Tisza government, several of which concerned precisely the issues Orbán had identified at Kötcse.
Last Friday, social workers protested outside the Prime Minister’s Office, demanding an immediate 25 per cent wage increase. That was the first protest since April organized by a sector that overwhelmingly voted for Magyar and subsequently had equally high expectations of the government. Tisza had promised an immediate rise during the election campaign, but Magyar subsequently announced that it would be implemented in stages, citing budgetary constraints. The prime minister appeared at the demonstration and offered talks but was booed during parts of his speech.
The problem had been identified eight days earlier by political analyst Péter Tölgyessy. Speaking during a lecture organized by Partizán, he warned that Magyar faced two familiar traps of Hungarian politics: fulfilling expensive election promises at the expense of fiscal stability, as former Socialist prime minister Péter Medgyessy had done, or reversing campaign commitments after taking office, effectively lying to his own voters, as Medgyessy’s successor, Ferenc Gyurcsány, had done.
Tölgyessy specifically cited the promised 25 per cent wage increase for employees in the social sector, warning that satisfying one sector would encourage others to demand similar treatment. Magyar had so far avoided both scenarios, he argued, but the underlying problem remained unresolved.
Then the past week began with two politically very awkward historic firsts for the governing party. On Monday, 21 September, President András Baka nominated Zoltán Szathmáry for prosecutor general. Magyar signalled within hours that Tisza was unlikely to support the candidate, and the parliamentary group unanimously rejected the nomination the following morning, requesting a replacement. Baka maintained his position, leaving an open disagreement between the governing majority and the president it had recently elected over a key constitutional appointment.
The Prosecutor’s Office itself became Magyar’s target a day later, when it requested the suspension of the prime minister’s parliamentary immunity—alongside that of two Fidesz MPs—over a 2024 incident. Magyar requested that parliament lift his immunity but attacked the Prosecutor’s Office at the same time, accusing it of being influenced by Orbán.
‘Magyar risks being drawn into too many ill-considered fights and making poorly framed or worded statements’
Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Baka sent a clear message to Magyar, warning that a new political majority must not become ‘the new owner of the state’, stressing that accountability must not turn into revenge and that the justice system must not become a political weapon. He also insisted that the same laws must apply to former and current governments alike.
The other historic first was potentially more damaging to the new government’s international reputation. Later on Monday, Magyar became embroiled in a bizarre late-night diplomatic confrontation with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on X over Hungary’s inclusion in Kyiv’s Carpathian Eight initiative, allegedly without its consent, and a preliminary MOL–Naftogaz fuel-storage project.
Sybiha accused him of continuing Orbán’s ‘obstructionism and isolationism’; Magyar responded around 11pm, calling Ukraine’s inclusion of Hungary in the initiative ‘completely unacceptable’. Foreign Minister Anita Orbán and Márton Hajdu subsequently joined the comment section, reviving the ‘Twitter wars’ that had characterized Budapest–Kyiv relations under Orbán.
That similarity sparked furious outrage among pro-Ukraine Tisza supporters, some even accusing Magyar of trying to be ‘more Fidesz than Fidesz itself’. Some defended Budapest’s position on the substance but criticized Magyar’s tone, while others questioned whether the change of government had delivered the promised break with Orbán-era diplomacy.
Turning Disillusionment into Support Is No Easy Task
While Tisza’s lead is still enormous, by explicitly seeking confrontational communication positions, Magyar risks being drawn into too many ill-considered fights and making poorly framed or worded statements. That lead could collapse as fast as it emerged.
This, coupled with the looming issue of credibility over promises—ranging from specific policy commitments to simply a commitment to conduct diplomacy differently from Orbán—could result in a further decline unless his team can keep the prime minister in check and adjust its communication strategy at least to some degree, without overlooking the fact that this strategy made him prime minister in the first place. But there is a huge difference between opposition and government communication.
‘The further and more important question remains: how large is that group, and is it large enough to strengthen, rather than weaken, the position of the right?’
Throwing accusations and threats around is a well-tested and proven strategy for an anti-establishment party campaigning from opposition. It looks very different from government. If Magyar keeps picking fights with different groups while the government is unable to deliver on the myriad promises made to different parts of society, the economy and the civil sphere, that could amount to a lot of conflicts to handle all at once.
And even all this does not mean that voters leaving Tisza would subsequently support Fidesz; in fact, parts of the base criticizing such decisions and statements are the more progressive voters who originally formed the core of the anti-Orbán voting coalition over the past decade. But some of them, as Medián’s numbers already showed, will definitely return to Fidesz. The further and more important question remains: how large is that group, and is it large enough to strengthen, rather than weaken, the position of the right?
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