BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Polls are closed in Sunday’s Hungarian general election, in which pro-Putin nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeking a fourth straight term.
The contest is expected to be the closest since Orban came to power in 2010, thanks to Hungary’s six main opposition parties putting aside their ideological differences to form a united front against his right-wing Fidesz party. Voters elected lawmakers to the country’s 199-seat parliament.
There were no exit polls, but the first results are expected later this evening. Opinion polls in the final days of the race gave Orban’s Fidesz a slight advantage over the Western-leaning opposition coalition.
Opposition parties and international observers have noted that there are structural obstacles to defeating Orban, highlighting the pervasive pro-government bias in the public media, the dominance of commercial news outlets by Orban allies, and a heavily rigged electoral map.
Opposition coalition candidate for prime minister Peter Marki-Zay wrote on his social media page to thank all Hungarians who cast their ballots and highlighted the more than 20,000 volunteer tellers who helped opposition parties to every polling station across the country.
“I thank the civilians who have spent all day checking the cleanliness of the polls and are now beginning the count,” wrote Marki-Zay.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has sent a full observer mission to Hungary, for only the second time in a European Union country, to monitor Sunday’s elections.
Gabor Somogyi, a 58-year-old marketing executive, said after the vote that he believed the Hungarian media favored Orban and Fidesz and made the election unfair.
“I’m really counting on surveillance,” he said. “But I don’t really think (the election) will be clean enough. The campaign wasn’t clean enough either.”
The six-party opposition coalition, United for Hungary, urged voters to support their efforts to introduce a new political culture based on pluralist governance and improved alliances with the European Union and the country’s NATO allies.
While Orban used to campaign on divisive social and cultural issues, he dramatically changed the tone of his campaign after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, and has since portrayed the election as a choice between peace and stability or war and chaos.
While the opposition has urged Hungary to support its embattled neighbor and act in lockstep with its EU and NATO partners, Orban, a long-time ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has insisted Hungary remain neutral and maintain close economic ties with the country Moscow maintains, including continuing to import Russian gas and oil on favorable terms.
At his latest campaign rally on Friday, Orban claimed that supplying arms to Ukraine – something Hungary is the only one of Ukraine’s EU neighbors to have opposed – would make the country a military target and that sanctions on Russian energy imports would damage Hungary’s own economy would paralyze.
“This is not our war, we have to stay out of it,” Orban said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday portrayed the Hungarian leader as being out of touch with the rest of Europe, which has banded together to condemn Putin, support sanctions against Russia and send aid, including arms, to Ukraine.
“He is practically the only one in Europe who openly supports Mr. Putin,” said Zelenskyy.
Opposition candidate Marki-Zay has promised to end what he says is rampant government corruption and raise living standards by increasing funding for Hungary’s ailing health and education systems. After voting in his hometown of Hodmezovasarhely, where he is mayor, Marki-Zay described Sunday’s election as a “tough battle” due to Fidesz’s superior economic resources and media advantage.
“We are fighting for decency, we are fighting for judicial independence and the rule of law in Hungary,” said Marki-Zay. “We fight for the whole world. We want to show that this model that Orban has introduced here in Hungary is not acceptable for any decent, honest man.”
Orban – a harsh critic of immigration, LGBTQ rights and “EU bureaucrats” – has attracted the admiration of right-wing nationalists across Europe and North America. Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson broadcast from Budapest for a week last summer, praising Orban’s no-compromise approach to immigration and his barbed-wire border fence.
Orban has seized control of many of Hungary’s democratic institutions and portrayed himself as a defender of European Christianity against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby”.
In addition to the general election, a referendum on LGBTQ issues was held on Sunday. The questions concerned sex education programs in schools and the availability of information about sex reassignment surgery for children.
Peter Sandor, 78, said after Sunday’s vote it was important that Orban could uphold Christian conservatism in Hungary.
“The significance of this election is to continue with what we have built over the past 12 years. Fantastic results,” he said. “If Fidesz doesn’t win, it goes down the drain like it did between 2002 and 2010.”