this video is brought to you by ground news now well into his fifth Administration Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban has become the eu's resident Troublemaker since his Reign started in 2010 orban's nationalist conservative fides party has batted away a series of electoral challenges from newly created opposition alliances leaving the country firmly in the strong man's hands but now for possibly the first time it looks like the opposition has a real chance to unseat him that's because the Centrist teaser party led by the young and charismatic Peter majar himself a former fedz official currently has a
lot of momentum ahead of hungary's 2026 election and has just overtaken fidz in the opinion polls so in this video we'll take a look at the recent survey data explain why support for orban's fides party is declining and whether this could actually mean the end for Orban before we start if you haven't already please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we release new videos first though let's start with the latest polling data according to politico's poll aggregator oran's nationalist conservative fides party has been overtaken by the
opposition for only the second time in a decade if we count its brief wobble in early 2021 since the most recent national election in 2022 when fides won 52.5% of the vote the party support in the polls has rapidly declined falling to 39% but some individual Hungarian polls from late November such as this one by savet research even estimate fidz to be polling as low as 35% Four Points behind teaser and among the lowest numbers since Orban came to power for context fidz has won every election since 2010 with roughly 50% of the popular vote
and its National poll ratings have rarely dropped below the mid-30s another Hungarian poll by the media news Outlet shows an even bigger 11o Gap among voters who say they're sure to vote with teaser on 47% and fidz on 36% according to that same poll the percentage of all voters expressing support for fidz has fallen from 32% in mid October to just 27% in late November and the share of hung iians who want a change of government has also increased by 10 percentage points since the June European and local elections this recent drop comes after a
steady decline over recent months and teaser seems to have a momentum behind it that Hungarian politics hasn't really experienced while orban's been prime minister this isn't to say there haven't been anti- Orban challenges before indeed there was the left Unity party the conservative yic party and the United for hungry movement but Orban has seen them off relatively easily this was largely because their leaders were deemed incompetent or elitist or because their coalitions were too ideologically diverse encompassing different anti- Oran parties without a unifying mission in this light fess's electoral slide seems to have been driven
by at least two complimentary factors firstly the hungarians seem to have simply grown tired of Orban and secondly that there's a new kid on the Block Peter maer who's generally viewed as a more competent opposition leader than Hungary has had before let's look at orban's waning popularity first in February there was a political Scandal which saw hungary's president kathin Novak plus orban's Justice Minister udit varer resign after it emerged that they had pardoned a man involved in covering up a sex abuse scandal at a children's home this sparked huge anti-government protests and the reason it
caused so much outrage was because like the rest of Fidel Novak had presented himself as a defender of traditional Christian Family Values Novak's hypocrisy massively undermined orban's pro- family agenda and caused fess's poll ratings to plummet around 10 percentage points between January and April 2024 the other domestic issue Orban has struggled with is the economy inflation has obviously been a problem for incumbent governments across the world but in part because of conspicuously weak wage growth Hungarian have suffered more than most with Hungary seeing the steepest decline in real wages in Europe in an attempt to
keep voters happy Orban has dramatically increased government spending but this hasn't worked and mainly just pushed the national deficit up to dangerous levels this year the government had to up its deficit Target for 2024 from 2.9% to 4.5% of GDP but they had already passed their target by June and Hungary now has the highest deficit among the so-called Vice grad 4 the other thing to mention is that orban's rhetorical standoff with the EU probably hasn't helped his polling concerned by orban's erosion of rule of law in Hungary the EU decided to withhold some 22 billion
EUR in structural funds in late 2023 and in response Orban then repeatedly blocked EU Aid packages to Ukraine while oran's repeated veto did get the EU to cave and release some of the money it also revealed that his priority was asserting his own power over other European States and might have created a sense among at least some Hungarian voters the Orban is more interested in gameplaying and Petty fights with the EU than actually solving hungary's domestic issues which in turn has likely contributed to their growing frustration and Orban fatigue this flips us nicely onto the
other side of the coin which is opposition leader Peter majar majar formerly a member of fides quit the party in a face Facebook post after its Scandal back in Spring saying orban's rule was a political product and boosting his profile by going on a media blitz and repeatedly declaring that orban's government was corrupt as a politician while majar is sometimes accused of being too aggressive and disparaging he's also generally considered more competent and savier than previous opposition leaders for instance despite teaser being a relatively new party that was formed back in 2021 but was basically
dormant until mjar joined it's managed to use its few campaign resources efficiently achieving nearly 30% of the vote at the EU elections in June and causing fess's vote share to drop below 50 for the first time at a national election since 2004 so what does this all mean for Orban well there's still at least a year to go until hungary's next parliamentary elections but we do have a sense that hungarians are simply growing tired of Orban on top frustration with orban's domestic struggles and constant provocations towards the EU voters now have an opposition that's starting
to look pretty threatening now teaser's Victory is definitely not guaranteed Orban has a track record of outperforming the polls at elections and teaser's Main project is basically cleaning up Hungarian politics with the party's website stating that they want to be quote Incorruptible non-black mailable honest straightforward open and extremism free Beyond this though it's not clear what they stand for and in the past this has been the downfall of previous opposition alliances which have collapsed after Poor performances at elections but while teasa May lack a clear platform what it does have is a popular and outspoken
leader majar is a fresh face who successfully used his prior connections to fedz not just through his own role but also through the fact that varka orban's disgraced Justice minister is actually maa's ex-wife to create the image of an emboldened dissident who's gone off to build his own movement ultimately will'll be keeping a Keen Eye on what's happening in Hungary as orban's dominance does seem to be slowly coming to an end that doesn't mean he's totally fallen off though with incoming president Donald Trump being a pretty big fan of hungary's prime minister with inviting Orban
to the us to meet with himself and Elon Musk that story has been covered extensively by more than 86 news outlets 133% of the reporting is coming from the left and 57% is coming from the right if you compare the headlines you'll start to see some interesting framing emerge with right-wing Outlets celebrating the future has begun or highlighting that with right leaning alliances anything is possible this is all possible thanks to our sponsor ground news a website and app developed by a former NASA engineer on a mission to give readers an easy datadriven objective way
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