In the country’s national election Sunday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a fourth term over his challenger Péter Márki-Zay, with Orban’s conservative party also posed for a sweeping victory.
Orban wasn’t the only winner on Sunday, as his nationalist-conservative party, Fidesz-KDNP alliance, won 53% of the national vote over the country’s European opposition coalition, United for Hungary, according to the Associated Press (AP).
The newly re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister called the election results a “huge victory” in his acceptance speech Sunday as his conservative party gained another supermajority, the outlet reported. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Hungary Spokesman Argues How To Stop Illegal Migration, Says Walls Aren’t Enough)
“We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels,” said Orban, according to the AP. “The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won.”
Orban won the landslide victory despite the Apr. 2 Publicus Institute poll commissioned by Népszava, which showed Márki-Zay’s opposition party with a 5% lead in expected voter turnout over the Fidesz-KDNP alliance, reported Hungarian Politics.
Márki-Zay accepted defeat in a speech late Sunday, blaming Fidesz for creating a gerrymandering voting system that made it impossible for the conservative party to be thrown out of power.
“We never thought this would be the result,” said Márki-Zay in his Sunday concession speech in Budapest, according to the AP. “We knew in advance that it would be an extremely unequal fight. We do not dispute that Fidesz won this election. That this election was democratic and free is, of course, something we continue to dispute.”
Jobbik president Péter Jakab, leader of one of six opposition parties working together to take down Orban, blamed the movement’s loss on Márki-Zay, according to Daily News Hungary.
Jakab said Márki-Zay caused the opposition alliance to fail by squandering an “army” of opposition parties, the outlet reported. “After six months, the opposition’s lead has changed to a disadvantage,” Jakab said according to Daily News Hungary.
Orban, who ran on a Hungarian-First platform, said the result of Hungarian’s national election was a message to Europe that “this is not the past, this is the future,” according to the AP.
Founder and editor of Compact magazine, Sohrab Ahmari, praised the Hungarian Prime Minister’s win on Twitter Sunday night as a rebuke of “global liberaldom.”
“Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party thumped the Frankenstein opposition coalition of liberals and neo-Nazis backed by quite literally every element of global liberaldom: from the EU to the prestige press, from the State Department to Mark Freakin’ Ruffalo. Congratulations, Hungary,” tweeted Ahmari.
“Condolences to Yascha Mounk, Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Bill Galston, Max Boot, the National Endowment for Democracy, Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Freedom House, right-liberal Catholics the world over, everyone at Foggy Bottom, Carl Bildt, Ursula von der Leyen, etc.,” he added.
Condolences to Yascha Mounk, Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Bill Galston, Max Boot, the National Endowment for Democracy, Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Freedom House, right-liberal Catholics the world over, everyone at Foggy Bottom, Carl Bildt, Ursula von der Leyen, etc.
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) April 4, 2022
Late Republic Nonsense author and Claremont Institute senior fellow David Reaboi also tweeted his approval of the Sunday Hungarian election results.
Congratulations to the Hungarian people for their wisdom.
— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) April 4, 2022
Fidesz Hungarian state secretary Zoltan Kovacs was pleased with the Sunday results calling it evidence of the strength of the country’s democracy.
“We have heard a lot of nonsense recently about whether there is democracy in Hungary,” Kovacs said at an election night event on the Danube river in Budapest, according to the AP. “Hungarian democracy in the last 12 years has not weakened, but been strengthened.”