BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared victory in Sunday’s national election, vying for a fourth term as the still-incomplete vote count showed a strong lead for his right-wing party.
In a 10-minute speech to Fidesz party officials and supporters at a Budapest election night rally, Orban addressed a crowd chanting “Victor!”  and said it was a “huge victory” for his party.
“We have won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon and you can certainly see it from Brussels,” said Orban, who has often been condemned by the European Union for overseeing democratic backwardness and alleged corruption.
While the votes were still being counted, it became clear that the question was not whether Orban’s Fidesz party would win the election, but how much.
With about 91% of the vote counted, Orban’s Fidesz-led coalition won 53% of the vote, while a pro-European opposition coalition, United for Hungary, had just 34%, according to the National Electoral Office.
It seemed likely that Fidesz would gain another constitutional majority, allowing it to continue to make profound unilateral changes to the Central European nation.
“Everyone in Budapest saw tonight that Christian Democrats, conservatives and patriots have won.  “We say in Europe that this is not the past, this is the future,” Orban said.
As Fidesz party officials rallied on the Danube River in Budapest on election night, Deputy Foreign Minister Zoltan Kovacs cited the participation of so many parties in the election as proof of the power of the Republic of Hungary.
“We have heard a lot of nonsense recently about whether there is democracy in Hungary,” Kovacs said.  “Hungarian democracy has not weakened in the last 12 years, but has strengthened.”
The confrontation was expected to be the closest since Orban came to power in 2010, thanks to the six main Hungarian opposition parties that set aside their ideological differences to form a united front against Fidesz.  Voters elected lawmakers in the country’s 199-seat parliament.
However, even in his hometown, opposition leader Peter Markey-Zei was behind Fidesz’s longtime incumbent, Janos Lazar, by more than 12 points, with more than 98% of the vote counted.  It was a disappointing sign for the prime minister-designate that he had promised to end what he claims is rampant government corruption, improve living standards by increasing funding for Hungary’s troubled healthcare and schools, and repairing health problems. country.
To our surprise, the radical right-wing Movement for the Homeland party appeared to have garnered more than 6% of the vote, surpassing the 5% threshold required to win seats in parliament.
Opposition parties and international observers have pointed to structural obstacles to Orban’s defeat, highlighting widespread pro-government bias in the media, the dominance of Orban’s allies in the commercial news agencies and a heavily falsified election map.
Edit Zgut, a political scientist at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, predicted that a clear victory for Orban would allow him to move further in an authoritarian direction, setting aside dissidents and conquering new sectors of the economy.
“Hungary seems to have reached a point of no return,” he said.  “The key lesson is that the pitch has tilted so much that it has become almost impossible to replace Fidesz in the election.”
The opposition coalition, United for Hungary, urged voters to support a new political culture based on pluralistic governance and improved alliances with the country’s allies in the EU and NATO.
Speaking to supporters in Budapest late Sunday, Marki-Zay conceded defeat, but said Fidesz had won according to a system it had set up.
“We never thought this would be the result.  “We knew in advance that it would be an extremely unequal match,” said Marki-Zay.  “We do not dispute that Fidesz won this election.  “The fact that these elections were democratic and free is, of course, something that we continue to question.”
While Orban has previously campaigned for divisive social and cultural issues, he has dramatically changed the tone of his campaign since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, and has since portrayed elections as a choice between peace and stability or war and chaos.
While the opposition called on Hungary to support its struggling neighbor and to be committed to its allies in the EU and NATO, Orban, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisted that Hungary remain neutral and economically neutral. its ties with Moscow, including continuing to import Russian gas and oil on favorable terms.
At his last rally on Friday, Orban argued that supplying Ukraine with weapons – something Hungary, only among Ukraine’s neighbors, has refused to do – would make the country a military target and that imposing sanctions on Russian energy imports will cripple Hungary’s own economy.
“This is not our war, we have to stay out of it,” Orban said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday described the Hungarian leader as irrelevant to the rest of Europe, which has joined forces to condemn Putin, support sanctions against Russia and send aid, including weapons, to Ukraine.
“He is essentially the only one in Europe who openly supports Mr Putin,” Zelensky said.
Speaking to supporters Sunday, Orban singled out Zelensky as part of the “overwhelming force” with which he said his party fought in the election – “the left at home, the international left everywhere, the Brussels bureaucrats, the Soros empire with all its money, the international media, and finally, even the Ukrainian president. “
Orban – a vocal critic of immigration, LGBTQ rights and “EU bureaucrats” – has won the admiration of right-wing nationalists across Europe and North America.  He has taken control of many of Hungary’s democratic institutions and is portrayed as a defender of European Christianity against Muslim immigrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby”.
In parallel with the parliamentary elections, a referendum on LGBTQ issues was held on Sunday.  The questions were about sex education programs in schools and the availability of gender reassignment information to children.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has sent a full observer mission to Hungary to observe Sunday ‘s elections, just the second time it has done so in a European Union country.
Associated Press author Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.