Hungary election live: ‘We have done it,’ Magyar tells jubilant Budapest as Orbán’s 16-year rule ends

Feels like Tisza’s leader Péter Magyar is increasingly confident about the result of the vote.

He has just posted a very brief but telling message on his Facebook:

Thank you Hungary!

Nothing from Viktor Orbán so far.

We are now up to 37%, but the projected seat distribution has not changed: 132 for Tisza, 59 for Fidesz, and 8 for Mi Hazank.

So Tisza is still just a single seat short of the key 2/3 majority – but remember, we still have lots of votes to be counted and the result can change in both directions.

With 29.21% votes counted, Tisza’s projected result is up to 132 – just a single seat short of the 2/3 majority required to change some key laws in the country.

So far, the partial results are remarkably close to the two polls we covered earlier.

• Opposition Tisza party clearly leads in the early vote count in Hungary.

• Tisza’s leader, Péter Magyar, said earlier he was “cautiously optimistic” about winning the vote and ending the 16-year rule of Viktor Orbán in the country.

• Follow for the latest updates, analysis and commentary from our team in Budapest, Hungary.

Of course, the numbers got updated just as I was typing the last post. Of course.

We are now at 21.54%, so getting close to a quarter of all votes, and Tisza is currently projected to get 128 seats – just short of the 133 needed for the 2/3 majority – to Fidesz’s 62 and Mi Hazank’s 8.

With 14.72% of votes now counted, Tisza’s lead has widened a bit (but it’s still very early days).

As things stand, it would have 125 seats to Fidesz’s 65 and the radical-right Mi Hazank’s 8.

They are well ahead in the single-seat constituencies, leading in 89 of them to Fidesz’s 16.

The opposition party is now in the lead in the party list vote too, which decides 93 mandates (out of 199).

But – and that’s a good example of how the election system has been, erm, rejigged – it currently gets less mandates from the party list system than Fidesz, despite being more than 4pp ahead in terms of the actual number of votes for them.

Visuals team

For what it’s worth, we are monitoring the real-time partial data and making them look pretty for you so it’s easier to understand what’s going on, so here is our first take.

But, as I said in previous post, this is still very, very early days, so – just as with the polls earlier – don’t read too much into it.

So we are now getting the first actual results – but as it’s just 6.56% of the votes counted, so it doesn’t really tell us anything remotely meaningful just yet.

The state of play at the moment gives Tisza 110 seats, Fidesz-KDNP 71, and Mi Hazank 9 – with Tisza winning single-seat constituency votes, but Fidesz marginally ahead in the national party list votes.

But, but, but… all of this will radically change, several times, in the next few hours, so don’t pay too much attention at this stage.

If you need a cup of tea, this would be a good moment to go and get it before we get some numbers we can actually work with.

If you think this is all confusing, wait till we are going to get the first partial results – as they will come from small, rural polling stations and are likely to heavily lean towards Fidesz (at least at the party list level), thus going directly against everything we talked about for the last hour.

Isn’t Hungarian politics fun?

The good news in all this chaos is that the actual vote count is now formally under way.

Let’s go!

We are expecting first partial results to be released at some point this hour.

• The polls have now closed in Hungary in a tightly fought election which could end Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule in the country (19:06).

• There were no exit polls, meaning we have no authoritative data on the result so far (18:59).

• Opposition leader Péter Magyar said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome after two newly published polls – both conducted before the election day – suggested his party could be on course to win the election (19:22, 19:40).

• But equally, Orbán’s chief of staff said he trusted the prime minister’s Fidesz party would have a majority in the new parliament.

• We are expecting partial results to start coming in the next hour, allowing us to get an early picture of how the vote unfolded.

at Tisza’s election night party at Batthyány Square in Budapest

During his media briefing, Magyar thanked Hungarians for showing up in record-high numbers for democracy, directing his thanks to all voters, regardless of who they voted for.

But in a hint of what he is expecting to see later tonight, he said:

“Based on the information we have, we are optimistic, cautiously optimistic.”

But Tisza wants to “win elections, not polls,” he quipped, so will have to wait for the results.

He also repeated his regular criticism of Orban’s rule, saying Hungary was “not a well-functioning state” as he offered some counter claims to the government’s suggestions of voting irregularities (18:58).

He didn’t take any questions from reporters, but said he would answer them later – but we need the actual results first.

Tisza’s leader Péter Magyar is briefing the media now.

It’s not really a victory speech – he is as careful as we are on this blog – but he says the party is “optimistic about the result.”

He says the record-high turnout also shows that the Hungarians considered this an important election, and they “made history again.”

The two polls – remember: these are not exit polls and we should treat them with caution – would appear to suggest three early talking points as we brace for a long wait this evening.

The first, a pretty, erm, fundamental one, is: will the actual results be anywhere near these numbers? Could they possibly have got it really wrong?

If confirmed, these results would point to a seismic change in Hungarian politics with Viktor Orbán out of office after 16 years in power, and all sorts of major consequences for Hungary, Europe, Ukraine and beyond.

But there will be plenty people looking at them with some scepticism, not least among Fidesz and Orbán supporters.

For example, Gergely Gulyás, Orbán’s chief of staff, told reporters he still trusted Fidesz would have a majority in the new parliament. We won’t know until we get the actual results.

The second question, assuming the polls got more right than wrong, focuses on Tisza’s exact result which they suggest could even be on the verge of having a two-thirds majority in the next parliament.

Whether they have 132 or 133 votes may feel like a small difference, but it would have major implications for their ability to rewire the state and reverse some of Orbán’s reforms, which would be critical for Hungary’s relations with the EU and unblocking access to EU funds.

Finally, will the radical-right Mi Hazank make it to the parliament or not? When every seat counts, their five or six seats could be the difference between different scenarios.