Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that had a general election been held on Sunday Fidesz would have secured another two-thirds majority.
In an interview with public television, the prime minister said the ruling party’s “convincing” 14-15% lead over the party in second place was a “decent result” and his party won the EP election with an advantage “streets ahead”. “There isn’t a party that wouldn’t trade with us,” he added. Hungarian democracy “is alive and well”, he said, thanking voters for the 57% turnout in Sunday’s elections. Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has won European parliamentary elections with over 50% of the vote in the past, he noted, adding that because of the high turnout, the 44.6% vote share and the more than 2 million votes cast for Fidesz mean that the ruling party received a record number of votes. Concerning the importance of mobilising the party’s base, the prime minister said there were always voters who had to be mobilised, but this time everyone had been told that this election was a matter of war or peace. Orbán said this election had been “more complex than usual” because of the EP elections coinciding with the local elections. “What’s more, we had to beat two oppositions: the old and the new. And we did, by 14-15%,” he added. Meanwhile, he said the European parliamentary elections were won by the pro-peace side. Orban said the election had been a chance to slow Europe’s drift into the war. He said this had been stopped in France, too, with the pro-peace forces winning by such a large margin that an early parliamentary election had to be called. “We await President Donald Trump … and then there will be peace,” the prime minister added.