Facing a real chance of defeat in the April parliamentary elections, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban can’t stop talking about President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine.

Just in the past few weeks, the Hungarian strongman called the war-torn country an “enemy” and accused its leadership of blackmail, deception, and election interference. Orban even deployed troops to defend Hungary’s energy infrastructure against a claimed Ukrainian threat.

Hungary’s leader is “desperately losing” his pre-election fight, Pavel Havlicek, a research fellow at the Association for International Affairs in Prague, told the Kyiv Independent.

To avert defeat, he is “picking external fights,” seeking to mobilize Hungarian voters against Ukraine while also pointing the finger at the domestic political opposition, the expert says.

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    • monkeyFromTheLake@programming.dev
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      13 hours ago

      Fortunately Hungarians are by high margin pro EU. But Orban had many years to change all sorts of policies to favour him in elections. He basically owns Hungary’s media landscape, gerrymandered election districts, suppressed visibility of opposition where possible and I don’t know what not. So even if the situation looks dire for him I am not confident that he will loose the election. One can only hope that Hungarians, with vast majority, vote for someone else than he.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    Oh man it’s gonna be so fucking funny if he and his party just completely fucking flop at the polls. And great for Hungarian people and the EU and Ukraine, too.

    • illi@piefed.social
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      12 hours ago

      I’d so love for Orban to lose. For one Hungary probably deserves it by now. And it’ll be fun to watch Slovakia’s Fico sweating as he looses his biggest ally.

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
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        12 hours ago

        I’ll be that guy.

        “lose” / “loses” are the words you’re looking for.

        This is one of those situations where English doesn’t make sense. “loose” doesn’t rhyme with “choose”, but “lose” does, yet all other “-ose” words rhyme with “nose”.

        “Lose” is the opposite of “win”. “Loose” is the opposite of “tight”.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    17 hours ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_Hungarian_parliamentary_election

    Significant differences have been noted by the Hungarian media in the numbers produced by different polling companies.[23][24][25] In January 2026, political scientist Gábor Török observed that the large differences between government- and non-government-affiliated pollsters was a new phenomenon in Hungarian politics. He suggested that the differences as they stood a few months out from the election were “unexplainable on research grounds”.[26]

    Government-aligned:

    Independent/opposition-aligned:

    Interesting.

    • testaccount372920@piefed.zip
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      16 hours ago

      Both show Orban starting to rise again or at least not decline anymore :( Come on Hungarian people, you have a chance to get rid of the wannabe dictator!