Viktor OrbΓ‘n has ruled Hungary for 16 years. His challenger, PΓ©ter Magyar, leads the Tisza party and has unified the opposition behind a single movement for the first time since 2010. The election is in and polls are showing two different realities.
Government-aligned pollsters consistently show OrbΓ‘n ahead. Every independent pollster shows Magyar ahead β by a wide margin.
Polls have been wrong in Hungary before. In 2022, independent pollsters underestimated Fidesz by as much as 16β20 points β one of the largest polling errors in Europe in recent history. OrbΓ‘n won with 54% of the vote. But even then, every major pollster correctly predicted the winner. This time, the two camps don't even agree on who's ahead.
The graphics below show seat predictions based on published forecasts by NΓ©zΕpont and 21 KutatΓ³kΓΆzpont, scaled to the 30-day polling average for each group. Parties or coalitions require 100 seats for a majority, 133 for a supermajority.
Based on current polling averages, both scenarios produce a surprisingly similar result: the winner gets 117 seats. But OrbΓ‘n needs a 6-point lead to get there. Magyar needs 13. The opposition needs more than twice the margin to win the same number of seats. That's not an accident β it's the result of systematic changes to the electoral system.
OrbΓ‘n redrew district boundaries in 2011 to favour Fidesz's rural base β and did so again in late 2024, reducing Budapest's districts from 18 to 16 while adding two in the countryside. This is largely where the built-in disadvantage for the opposition comes from. He also eliminated the second-round runoff that had previously forced parties to form coalitions. The result is a system where the largest party β even without a majority β wins far more seats than its vote share would suggest, as long as the opposition is fragmented. This is how Fidesz won a two-thirds supermajority with only 49% of the vote in 2018.
But the opposition isn't fragmented in 2026. Magyar's Tisza party has united anti-OrbΓ‘n voters behind a single list and is running candidates in all 106 districts. The structural advantage doesn't disappear β but in a two-horse race, it narrows dramatically.
On April 12, this page will shift to tracking official results and independent projections as they come in. Bookmark this page or subscribe to updates.
We built this site to document the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election in real time. Polling data is sourced from all major Hungarian institutes, grouped by their political ties β "government-aligned" means the pollster has documented financial or institutional ties to Fidesz or the Hungarian government. We do not produce polls. On April 12, this page will shift to tracking official results and independent projections as they come in.