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

FILE -People listen to the speech of former Hungarian government insider Peter Magyar next to Kossuth Square on Tuesdy, in Budapest, Hungary, March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos, File) 2026-03-30T05:08:16Z 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 1980

原文链接: AP News