Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is set to lose the national election, with opposition leader Peter Magyar set to win a large majority in parliament. It is a bombshell result in an election seen as one of Europe’s most consequential this year.
Orbán, the longest-serving leader in the European Union and a longtime ally of President Trump, conceded defeat Sunday night after what he called a “painful” election result, ending 16 years in power.
“I congratulated the victorious party,″ Orbán told supporters in Budapest. “We are going to serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition as well.”
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Magyar said that Orbán conceded to him in a phone call. “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just congratulated me on the phone on our victory,” Magyar wrote.
With 77% of the vote counted, Magyar’s party had more than 53% support to 38% for Orbán’s governing Fidesz party.
Addressing his supporters earlier Sunday evening, Magyar said that up to 6 million Hungarians had voted in Sunday’s election, in a country that has little more than 9 million people.
With the Parliament building as the backdrop, large crowds waving the Hungarian flag gathered at the Tisza’s election results party near the Danube River and celebrated Magyar’s projected win.
“We are celebrating because this is a moment that will go down in history, in Hungarian history, that this regime, this system has been broken … I think this is a celebration of democracy,” a Budapest resident in the crowd told CBS News.
Independent watchdogs and European Union officials have accused Orbán’s government of launching a sustained assault on the country’s democratic institutions and rule of law since. In the 16 years since he took office in 2010, the country has descended to the rank of the most corrupt country in the European Union, according to the U.K.-based anti-corruption group Transparency International.
At a polling station in Budapest on Sunday, CBS News spoke to a handful of voters, all of whom said they were voting for Magyar and his center-right Tisza party.
“Orban is very anti-EU and pro-Russia, and I think that aligning yourself with, in my opinion, a war criminal, is not good for the country of Hungary,” said a 21-year-old who only identified himself as Daniel.
Casting his ballot in Budapest on Sunday, Marcell Mehringer, 21, told the Associated Press he was voting “primarily so that Hungary will finally be a so-called European country, and so that young people, and really everyone, will do their fundamental civic duty to unite this nation a bit and to break down these boundaries borne of hatred.”
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