Hungarians voted on Sunday in what many observers are calling the most consequential parliamentary election in the country's post-communist history, with polls suggesting that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party could lose power for the first time since 2010. After just five hours of voting, turnout had already reached a record 37.98% — a dramatic 12-point increase on the previous election — signalling an unusually mobilised electorate in the 10-million-strong central European country.

Orbán, a 62-year-old eurosceptic nationalist who has governed Hungary with an increasingly tight grip for 16 years, faces an unprecedented challenge from Péter Magyar, 45, a former insider of Fidesz who broke with the ruling party two years ago and built the centre-right Tisza party from scratch. Most reliable polls show Tisza leading Fidesz by 7 to 9 percentage points, with Magyar's party at roughly 38–41 percent. After casting his ballot in Budapest, Orbán told reporters,