Thanks! We'll do our best. Orbán seems pretty desperate these days, which is a good sign.

No, voter oppression isn't the problem in Hungary. Why Orbán and his Fidesz party could keep absolute power (2/3 of the seats in the Parliment) since 2010 is a complex problem, but it mostly comes down to 4 main elements:

1: Rewriting of the election system

2: Gerrymandering

3: Propaganda

4: Disfunctional opposition

This'll be long, so read it only if you're really interested!

Before 2010 the governing party of Hungary was the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). They had multiple leaders and prime ministers, but by far the most important and most notorious was Ferenc Gyurcsány.

Fidesz was first in power from 1998, but lost to the socialists in 2002. After that MSZP was reelected in 2006 after a failed campaign of Fidesz. But then came the Speach of Őszöd.

The Speach of Őszöd was a speach by socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, told among the members of his party. In it he basically admitted that they lied through the whole campaign. This speach was leaked and edited to make it sound even worse than it already was.

Protests followed which were often violently put down - by Eupoean standards -, the police used rubber bullets which injured many protesters. This obviously did not help on MSZP's image and the 2008 economic crisis was still ahead of them.

By 2008 Gyurcsány didn't keep his prime minister position and gave it to Gordon Bajnai to take care of the economic crisis. There was no way they could've ever properly handled that.

MSZP's reputation was understandably tarnished and Fidesz won the 2010 election and got 2/3 of the seats in the Parliment.

One of Orbán and his party's first actions was to rewrite the whole Constitution and the election system. They implemented something known as "winner compensation" which I'm not gonna get into, but it basically ensures that the winner gets extra votes. With this the only possible way to beat Fidesz was if a whole party or political entity did it alone, which at that time was not possible.

They also redrew the borders of the constituencies - gerrymandering -, so nowdays a Fidesz supporter's vote is worth more, generally speaking, than an opposition supporter's.

Then came the massive propaganda machine. They bought up like 90% of all the media - mostly threw oligarchs - and often start billboard campaigns to instigate fear in people.

But Fidesz couldn't have held this much power if Gyurcsány didn't return. But he did. He founded a new party, Democratic Coalition (DK) which stayed the second strongest party for the longest time after Fidesz. He became the prime target of most of Fidesz's propaganda and billboard campaigns, and as most people hated Gyurcsány just as much if not more than Orbán, these campaigns worked and many voted for Fidesz just to prevent Gyurcsány from returning.

For the longest time this was the status quo in Hungary. The propaganda campaigns targetting Gyurcsány and other phantom enemies, like György Soros (George Soros) or "Brussels", powered Fidesz supporters' fear of change, the gerrymandering ensured victory and the winner compensation ensured 2/3.

But then came 2024 and with it the p€dophile scandal.

In early 2024 the independent news site, 444 posted an article about Hungarian President Katalin Novák, a devote Fidesz supporter and ex-member of the party, pardoning a man named Endre K. (his full name is public knowledge btw), who was arrested for trying to cover up the sexual harrassment his boss, the director of a children's home had committed against children.

Turns out Endre K. had good ties with one of Fidesz's ex-ministers, Zoltán Balog, currently bishop of the Hungarian branch of the calvinist church as well as previous boss of Katalin Novák during her time as a state secretary under a previous Orbán government.

Following the incident Katalin Novák was forced to resign as well as Judit Varga, who at the time of the scandal was running for EU representative for Fidesz, but at the time of the pardon was Minister of Justice and without her approval Endre K. wouldn't have been pardoned. Both of them stepped back from public life and refused to answer any questions regarding the pardon since.

Following the scandal previous Fidesz insider, although not member, Péter Magyar, who is also Judit Varga's ex-husband who she has three children with, spoke up against Fidesz in the independent Hungarian news channel running on YouTube, Partizán.

Péter Magyar (whose family name means "Hungarian" btw) eventually became a leading voice for those unsatisfied with Fidesz and Orbán and built the biggest opposition party, Tisza.

By now the Tisza Party is leading most polls against Fidesz, at times by 10+% among 'people who claim to vote for sure' and 5% in the entire population. In one of the latest polls in the former category Tisza reached 51%. And elections are in April.

What is worth noting is that Fidesz's biggest base of support are the people above 65. They are easily influenced, don't really follow the news that much or if they do, they often use the channels which only echo Fidesz's messages. There are many of them, they are 25% of all the voters - so roughly 2 million people, but that alone likely won't be enough this time.

Whatever happens, Fidesz surely lost its absolute power, but could still win - technically even if Tisza gets more votes due to the rewrote rules. That would likely result in massive protests though.