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Orbán under growing pressure as two opinion polls show opposition lead
Hungary’s opposition Tisza Party continues to strengthen its position ahead of the 2026 parliamentary election, according to two major opinion polls published in January. While methodologies differ, both surveys show the Tisza Party leading the governing Fidesz–KDNP, even as public expectations still favour Prime Minister Viktor Orbán remaining in power.
As we wrote on Tuesday, it is now official: Hungary parliamentary election 2026 date announced by the Hungarian president.
Medián: Tisza leads by 12 points among decided voters
According to the latest survey by Medián, the Tisza Party has increased its advantage over Fidesz–KDNP to 12 percentage points among voters who have decided both to vote and which party to support. Two months earlier, the gap stood at 10 points.
Among this group of decided voters, Tisza now stands at 51%, while Fidesz–KDNP has fallen to 39%. In the total population, Tisza’s support is measured at 40%, compared with 33% for the governing alliance.
Medián notes that the government’s intensified campaign has not brought in new supporters. The opposition’s gains largely come from voters already critical of the government, rather than from former Fidesz voters. The Democratic Coalition (DK) has collapsed to 1% across all voter categories, while the Mi Hazánk Movement is hovering around the parliamentary threshold.
Despite these figures, 44% of respondents still believe Fidesz–KDNP will win the election scheduled for 12 April 2026, while 39% expect a Tisza victory—suggesting lingering doubts about the feasibility of a change in government.
IDEA Institute: smaller gap, DK still above the threshold
A separate poll by the IDEA Institute paints a broadly similar picture, though with some notable differences. IDEA measured the Tisza Party holding an 8-point lead over Fidesz–KDNP in the total population and a 10-point advantage among decided voters.
In early January, IDEA found that 35% of the adult population would vote for Tisza, compared with 27% for Fidesz–KDNP. Unlike Medián, IDEA continues to measure the Democratic Coalition (DK) at or just above the 5% parliamentary threshold, meaning the party led by Klára Dobrev would still enter Parliament if an election were held now.
IDEA is currently the only major independent polling firm that projects DK’s parliamentary entry. Most other surveys suggest that, beyond Tisza and Fidesz–KDNP, it would be Mi Hazánk rather than DK that reaches the threshold. IDEA, however, measured Mi Hazánk’s support as falling slightly below 5% at the start of 2026.
As we wrote today about CPAC Hungary 2026, Budapest will host major conservative summit ahead of election, Trump or JD Vance could attend
Limited shifts, but momentum favours Tisza
According to IDEA, party support has changed only modestly over the past year, but the trend remains favourable to Tisza. The party’s lead has grown slightly—within the margin of error—while Mi Hazánk’s support has declined by a similar amount, pushing it below the parliamentary threshold in IDEA’s measurement.
Methodology
- Medián conducted its survey between 7 and 13 January, using telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 people. The margin of error is ±3.5 percentage points.
- IDEA Institute collected data between 31 December and 6 January via an online (CAWI) survey of 1,500 respondents, weighted to reflect the adult population by age, gender, education, settlement type, and region. The margin of error is ±2.3 percentage points.
A divided picture ahead of 2026
Taken together, the two polls confirm a clear opposition lead in voter preferences, but also highlight continued public scepticism about an actual change in government. While the Tisza Party appears to be consolidating the anti-government vote, many Hungarians still expect Fidesz–KDNP to retain power after the 2026 election—underscoring the gap between political momentum and perceived political reality.
Read here for more news about Hungary Parliamentary elections 2026
For the foreigners … Hungarian elections are not a level playing field, so the above numbers are … Tricky.
One of the first things our Politicians did when they came to power, they gerrymandered the voting districts in favor of rural, pro Fidesz areas. They then packed opposition voters into fewer urban seats, and added a very odd compensation seat mechanism for good measure.
In certain systems, compensation seats help parties that lose in districts, so votes are not wasted.
However, in Hungary, even the winning candidate’s surplus votes (meaning everything in excess of the runner up) are also added to that party’s NATIONAL list. Thus, the biggest party gets rewarded TWICE – once for winning the district, and again with extra national list votes. This has historically been a major boost for its engineers – Fidesz.
In summary, Fidesz can win a two thirds supermajority WITHOUT two thirds of the vote (actually far less). Isn’t that … Interesting?
Thank you so much, Dear Norbert, for the thoughtful explanation!
As I have on hand the record of Hungarian polling companies in March of 2022, I can clearly see that Median was one of the most accurate.
That previous accuracy means this poll about party favouribility, unlike Globalist Leftist Závecz polls, cannot be dismissed.
Concerning the polls about ‘the direction of the country’ I note that Fidesz stopped the bleeding, but, has some progress to make.
This reflects 2 issues : negativity about the economy and institutional corruption.
As to the former there is not much time to address that. At best Orbán will have to get a multi-billion dollar cash gift from one of his big friends, and then apply that to the area of the economy that features the most Swing-voters.
As to institutional corruption : Orbán could choose to have very public mass firings and replace those people, who are currently a publicity weight, with those who have higher favourbility ratings.
Concerning your comment on ‘intensified government campaign’, I think there are 2 large variables here.
Variable 1. What Hungarian Counterintelligence provides Orbán to reveal about Magyar’s non-Hungarian backers, and his private financial doings.
Variable 2. How well Fidesz manages to scare and motivate their base, so that they have very high turnout.
As to Magyar, there is one variable, and that is whether he manages to persuade Hungarian smalltowners and Rednecks that , if elected, he will not rule Hungary on behalf of Bruxelles.
If he persuades 1 in 4 of them he will be elected. If not he loses.
Currently I do not see the Magyar Campaign doing anything about this, but, rather, they are only using stock techniques of having Magyar look presidential.
As I have said : that will not work for him, particularly as February and March will show the Fidesz Campaign punching very very hard at him.
Polls look good but like Norbert wrote, it is far from a clear win for Tisza even with 12 point lead among decided voters. The election system in our country is so rigged by Fidesz that it probably will take supermajority of votes for Tisza to be able to actually gain enough seats for overcoming Fidesz.
With every active voters help, who have had enough of economic stagnation, deteriorating healthcare and education, corruption, pro-Russia and anti-EU policies, we have a chance to beat Fidesz. But every vote counts, so I hope nobody misses voting day thinking “it is a clear win for Tisza anyway”. It is not.