Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban, wins a landslide

VIKTOR ORBAN made history on April 8th as his Fidesz party swept back to power for the third time in a row since 2010. Almost-complete results showed by the following morning that Fidesz was likely to have won a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament, with 133 of 199 seats, enough to alter the constitution. Jobbik, a nationalist party that is now tacking to the centre, came second with 26 and a Socialist-led coalition third, with 20. Most of the remainder were divided between small liberal and left-wing parties, which in many places split the anti-Fidesz vote. Turnout was 69%.

Mr Orban told a cheering crowd of his supporters: “We have won. Hungary has won a great victory.” The high turnout, he said, had “cast aside all doubts”. Fidesz won almost 49% of votes, compared with 45% in 2014, after a campaign that focused almost exclusively on the supposed threat to national sovereignty posed by migrants, of whom Hungary has accepted vanishingly few. Mr Orban also railed against the European Union (from which Hungary takes huge subsidies), the United Nations and George Soros, a Hungarian-born philanthropist whom Mr Orban blames for much that is wrong with the world. Concerns about Mr Orban’s steady centralisation of political and economic power, as well as the corruption and cronyism that has allegedly thrived under his government, had little impact on the result. NGOs and liberal civic organisations now fear a further crackdown if the government, as seems likely, passes a new tranche of laws known to many as the “Stop Soros” package, that have already been tabled in parliament. These would require NGOs dealing with migration to obtain a government licence, and pay a 25% tax on foreign donations.

Positive economic indicators boosted Fidesz. Unemployment is down and the economy is growing steadily, at around 4%. The nascent middle class is prospering and young families with several children receive lavish tax breaks.

The high turnout had initially caused excitement among the opposition. Many hoped that it heralded a possible repeat of a mayoral by-election in the Fidesz stronghold in Hodmezovasarhely in southern Hungary, where a greatly increased turnout of voters swept a single opposition candidate to power in February. Instead the turnout in the national election seems to be testimony to Fidesz’s organisational powers.

The fallout among Hungary’s fractured opposition is likely to continue. They failed to focus on a consistent message. Several small liberal or left-wing parties insisted on running their own slates in local constituencies where the failure to reach consensus on a single anti-government candidate cost it numerous seats. Jobbik’s modest performance, despite its attempt to turn to the centre, prompted the resignation of Gabor Vona, its leader. “We would have liked this high turnout to yield a different result, but the people decided this way,” he said.

Mr Orban’s victory will cause dismay in Brussels, where he is regarded as a difficult customer, but was widely welcomed by nationalist and populist leaders across Europe. He won votes thanks to an appeal to national identity and sovereignty, but also by spreading scare stories about floods of refugees from Africa and the Middle East. These were widely believed, even though the flow of asylum seekers into Hungary has been reduced to a trickle by its southern border fence, and even though attempts by some EU members to impose quotas on all states for sharing out refugees already inside the EU are politically dead.

Mr Orban’s tactics will now no doubt be copied by populists elsewhere. Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom tweeted that the result was “a well deserved victory”. Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, hailed Hungarian voters’ rejection “of the inversion of values and of mass immigration”.