It’s the same old pattern: fabricated trends, coordinated timing, and carefully crafted data designed to shape headlines rather than reflect facts.
None of this is happening in isolation. For months, reports have detailed how opposition-side pollsters coordinate their work, a “roundtable” of institutes operating on a shared political schedule, much like before the 2022 election. Back then, the same network promised a tight race and delivered a 20-point defeat.
Today, the very same actors are pushing an identical illusion, hoping lightning will strike twice.
What makes this story different is how blatant this tactic has become. Medián’s managing director, Endre Hann, has already admitted, in his own words, that his company uses “American campaign-support methodologies,” a system developed by “experts with great routine in supporting campaigns.”
That single remark, made during a Klubrádió interview last summer, stripped away the last layer of neutrality. A polling firm that describes its work as “campaign support” is no longer observing the race but running in it.
And Hann didn’t stop there. In an interview with Klikk TV this January, he dismissed government-side pollsters for sometimes appearing “with very strange numbers,” while in the same breath claiming that “everything indicates 2025 was favorable for the Tisza Party.”
The contradiction was glaring. Only a few weeks earlier, Medián’s own December survey had shown that Péter Magyar’s supposed advantage had completely vanished, with 48 percent of respondents considering Orbán Viktor the more suitable prime minister candidate versus 48 percent indicating they would vote for Magyar.
The man who once conceded that the 2022 elections featured polls made “specifically to influence public opinion” now accuses others of manipulation, a self-exposure if there ever was one.
Even within the opposition, the façade is cracking. Accusations of manipulation, selective leaks, and money offers have turned these supposed experts into campaign tools. Their “research” no longer measures opinion; it manufactures it.
In January, the company’s surveys once again boosted the Tisza Party after a visible slump, triggering outrage not from government critics but from other leftists, namely the Democratic Coalition (DK). They accused Medián of offering “better numbers” in exchange for paid research contracts, even publishing excerpts from their correspondence.
One leaked text referenced a left-leaning subsample the firm suggested they should “do something with.” When the published data then showed DK hovering near 1 percent, the conflict of interest became impossible to ignore.
And now, enter Minerva. A self-styled “newcomer” on the polling market, it suddenly produced the most spectacular Tisza lead to date: 54 percent versus 36 for Fidesz.
According to Zoltán Kiszelly, political director at Századvég, Minerva’s poll “magically reversed” every existing trend, conveniently strengthening narratives where the opposition had been weakest. His conclusion was blunt. This is not social science; it’s messaging.
The real story is bigger than one pollster’s dishonesty. It is a coordinated attempt to deceive voters, inflate expectations, and demoralize political opponents through data that was never meant to describe reality.
Hungarians have learned this lesson before. Elections are not won in spreadsheets, in the columns of friendly newspapers, or by the poll factories of a desperate opposition. They are won in real communities, by real voters.