“If the opposition wins just a simple majority, Orbán will have a lot of tools to make it almost impossible for a new government to be formed or even for a new parliament to be convened,” she said. “He could engineer a constitutional crisis and declare an emergency.”
Orbán’s supporters, for their part, point to the prime minister’s past as proof that he is ready to accept the result of an election. Voted out after his first term in 2002, Orbán bided his time and staged a comeback eight years later. If there’s a danger of somebody not accepting the results, they say, it’s more likely to come from Magyar’s Tisza party.
“They are building the narrative that if they lose the election, then this is an illegitimate result,” said János Bóka, Hungary’s EU minister.
“Would Péter Magyar come out to a camera and say that, okay, I’ve heard the voice of the Hungarian people, they want this government to stay in power?” he added. “Is this a realistic possibility after all this political hysteria that they created?”
Whatever the truth of the accusations, the campaign has already turned acrimonious, with competing claims about the legitimacy of the process. Against that backdrop, the risk of post-election turmoil is rising.
Surveys by independent and Tisza-friendly pollsters have Magyar’s movement ahead on average by 8 to 10 percentage points. Others by pollsters with ideological or financial ties to Fidesz — notably the Nézőpont Institute and the Center for Fundamental Rights — show Orbán’s party with a comfortable lead.