A youth-led push for change threatens Orbán’s 16-year rule in Hungary's elections

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — A group of friends in their mid-20s campaigned door to door last week in a small Hungarian city, supporting a political movement that soon could end Prime Minister Viktor Orbán 's 16-year grip on power.

The young men from Hungary's Lake Balaton region were volunteering for the center-right Tisza party and its leader, Péter Magyar, and campaigning to move past what they described as Orbán's broken system.

“We've lived our whole lives in this system, and we want to see what it could be like outside of it,” said Florián Végh, a 25-year-old student. “I can say on behalf of my fellow university students and my friends that this system is absolutely dysfunctional.”

A generational gap is widening, with Hungary’s youth pushing overwhelmingly for an end to Orbán's autocratic rule while the oldest citizens remain loyal to the prime minister — a split that could be a decisive factor in the April 12 elections.

Orbán, 62, trails in the polls behind Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer who broke with Orbán's nationalist-populist Fidesz party over a political scandal in 2024. He has led Tisza on a rapid political rise, inspiring a voting cohort that had largely avoided politics for at least two decades.

Fidesz's declining popularity during economic stagnation and political and corruption scandals has widened the demographic divide. A recent survey by pollster 21 Research Center found that 65% of voters under 30 support Tisza, while 14% are backing Orbán.

Changing of the guard

One Tisza volunteer, 24-year-old student Levente Koltai, pointed out that Fidesz is an acronym in Hungarian for “Alliance of Young Democrats.” But he believes the party no longer lives up to its name.

“Fidesz has lost the title of young, democratic and alliance,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s gone from young to old, from democratic to tending toward dictatorial, and from an alliance to a circle of cronies.”

Andrea Szabó, a senior researcher with Eötvös Loránd University's Institute for Political Science in Budapest, said a changing of the guard was emerging in Hungary, where “a new, active political generation is beginning to unfold before our eyes.”

While Orbán’s political generation was defined by its fight against Hungary’s Soviet-era socialist system in the 1980s and 1990s, "now, we have reached the point where after 25 years, there is a new political generation that is against the Orbán regime,” Szabó said.

‘Illiberal’ drift toward Russia and China

Orbán’s government defines itself as both Christian-national and “ illiberal,” and has drifted away from partners in the European Union in favor of closer relations with Russia and China.

Long accused by critics of taking over Hungary's institutions, clamping down on press freedom and overseeing entrenched political corruption — charges he denies — Orbán has become an icon in the global far-right movement.

Admirers approve of his opposition to immigration and curtailing of LGBTQ+ rights, and applaud benefits to young families such as abolishing income tax for mothers with multiple children and providing state-backed loans to first-time homebuyers.

Such policies, as well as a pension supplement for retirees, appeal to many older voters. Fidesz leads Tisza 50% to 19% among retirement-age Hungarians, according to the 21 Research Center Poll.

Zsuzsanna Prépos, a retiree, said at one of Orbán’s recent campaign rallies that she was “very happy” with the government's pension policies, and that she's supporting Fidesz because it “helps young people.”

“When I was young ... I didn’t get anything. Now young people have a lot of help,” she said.

Yet such measures have not translated into youth support for Orbán. In several recent speeches, he has both scolded young people for their anti-government attitudes and pleaded with them to reconsider.

“Young people, wake up!” he said at a rally last week. “These are not times for taking risks, experimenting or trying new things. ... Believe me, today only Fidesz and my humble self can provide this country with security.”

Szabó, the researcher, said while many young people view Orbán's family support policies positively, their “very strong sense of justice” is incompatible with "the authoritarian exercise of power, the corruption, the fact that they feel vulnerable and that there is insecurity in the country.”

“Their lives essentially took place entirely within the Orbán regime, so they know nothing other than this kind of functioning of power," she said.

Tisza's rise

Recent events in Hungary have turned large numbers of youth against the ruling party.

Hungary was rocked by scandal in February 2024 when it was revealed that the president, a close Orbán ally, had granted a pardon to an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case. The revelation shocked the country, and the president and justice minister resigned.

Days later, some of the country’s best-known influencers led a protest demanding a political transformation. Drawing tens of thousands, it marked a turning point which “opened the door to politicization for a lot of young people," Szabó said.

In the wake of the pardon scandal, Magyar broke with Fidesz and launched Tisza. Three months later, the party won 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections.

Magyar has built his campaign on promises to end Orbán's drift toward Russia and restore Hungary's Western orientation, and to revive the stagnating economy by recovering billions in EU funds that are blocked over rule-of-law and corruption concerns.

That economic message has resonated with youth. Végh, the Tisza volunteer, said it's easier than ever for his internet-savvy generation to access different forms of information, and to travel to nearby countries where governments are putting public money to good use.

“In Austria, you see a much calmer, more peaceful, more educated society with better roads and better health care," he said. "You cross the border and see that you have drifted into a developed European country.”

Although Tisza leads in the polls, its victory is far from assured. Orbán has a lead among older voters and in much of the countryside.

At a recent rally in Budapest that drew upward of 100,000 people, Tisza supporter Dorina Csobán said the election battle had become "pretty divisive in my family for the older people, because we younger people are saying clearly that there must be change.”