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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Robert Tait in Washington

Orbán’s defeat holds lessons for US: ‘Autocrats may rise, but are not invincible’

Orbán Fidesz Viktor Orbán Donald Trump United States Steven Levitsky Hungary Vladimir Putin JD Vance the Republican Party The United States
two men in suits stand in front of a crowd of people waving Hungarian flags
Viktor Orbán and JD Vance during the rally on the Day of American-Hungarian, ahead of the Hungarian parliamentary election, in Budapest on 7 April 2026. Photograph: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

For US Democrats seeking rays of light in the dark landscape of Donald Trump’s authoritarian onslaught, illumination has arrived from the unlikely source of Budapest.

Viktor Orbán’s stunning defeat in Hungary’s general election – ending 16 years of unbroken rule for his governing Fidesz party – carries symbolic and psychological significance for American politics out of all proportion to the central European country’s modest size and distance from the US.

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