Vice President JD Vance is in Hungary today to help Prime Minister Viktor Orban resuscitate his campaign in the last few days ahead of the country’s contentious April 12 elections.
After 16 consecutive years in power — following a shorter stint as prime minister from 1998 to 2002 — Orban faces the most serious challenge to his rule yet in the form of the Péter Magyar, head of the Tisza party, which is topping all major polling today. Magyar , 45, is a former member of Orban’s ruling Fidesz party, but he quit in 2024 to take over the relatively unknown Tisza, helping to make it the fastest growing and most competitive party in this year’s races.
The Trump administration is a big supporter of Orban, making no secret that he has the White House endorsement. During the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, President Donald Trump sent a video message calling Orban a “fantastic guy” adding that the prime minister is a “strong leader who has shown the entire world what’s possible when you defend your borders, your culture, your heritage, your sovereignty and your values.”
Today, Vance is expected in Budapest to meet with Orban directly in order to lend a hand. According to the White House , the vice president will also deliver remarks on the "rich partnership between the United States and Hungary." Reports indicate that the vice president will attend a major Fidesz rally as well. Vance’s visit follows U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trip to Hungary last February, during which he told Orban that “as long as you’re the prime minister and the leader of this country, it’s in our national interest that Hungary be successful.” The administration has been clear in its support for conservative parties across Europe and beyond. In February 2025, Vance met with Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel before the German parliamentary elections. Months later, Washington extended a $20 billion currency swap deal to Javier Milei’s Argentina ahead of key midterm elections.
Can Vance’s visit help the embattled Orban? Not likely, according to Marc Loutau, an Affiliated Fellow at the Central European University Institute for Advanced Studies. A Trump visit might have made a difference, but “Vance doesn't set the campaign trail on fire by any stretch of the imagination,” Loutau said. “Few Hungarians know who he is.” Ivan Laszlo Nagy, a Hungarian political journalist currently working for the Columbia Journalism Review, agrees. Vance is “hardly a household name in Orban's more rural, less educated base, even though Orban tries to sell it as a massive event,” Nagy said. Conversely, Joakim Scheffer, writing for the Hungarian Conservative, notes that Vance is the highest-level U.S. visitor to Hungary since June 2006, when then-President George W. Bush came to Budapest. That means something. According to Scheffer, Vance “represents a strand of Republican intellectual thought that views Hungary as an alternative to the liberal governance model, praising the country and Orban for their positions on mass migration, sovereignty, and family policy, as well as their opposition to the ruling EU elites.” But Vance’s visit comes at a low point in the popularity of the Trump administration both at home and abroad. Across Europe, polls conducted after the first week of the Iran War already suggest a majority of the population opposes the ongoing conflict. So far, Orban has used the Iran War to present himself as a tested leader in times of crisis that will keep Hungary out of international wars. Arguing that the Iran War would lead to the activation of terrorist networks in Europe, Orban ordered renewed controls on foreign passenger traffic arriving in Hungary and raised the country’s security alert level. Even so, Loutau believes that the Iran War will not play a major role in the results of the April 12 election. “The Iran War is mostly a non-issue in Hungary. It's far away. It hasn't affected energy prices here,” Nagy said. If anything, the war could be used as a cudgel against Orban, who often refers to Trump and himself as forces for peace, he argued.
Far more important for the Hungarian elections is the Ukraine War and the country’s relations with the European Union (EU). Orban has been blocking a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine and has painted Magyar as subservient to Ukrainian and EU interests. If Orban is the preferred candidate by the Trump administration and far-right European politicians, Magyar is favored by Brussels and most EU leaders. Still, EU support for the opposition leader has been far more muted to avoid providing Orban with extra ammunition in his campaign. Even if Magyar were to become the next Hungarian prime minister, relations between Brussels and Budapest would hardly shift right away. Magyar’s Tisza Party voted against the €90 billion EU loan and has announced its opposition to sending weapons to Ukraine or fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU accession. One third of Tisza Party voters consider Ukraine a threat, a remarkable percentage although much lower than the 63% among voters for Orban’s Fidesz. With less than a week to go until the election, and the possibility that Orban’s Fidesz wins the most parliamentary seats without winning the most votes due to the particularities of Hungary’s election laws , not much is for certain. What we do know, however, is that the elections in this Central European country of 9.5 million people will be closely watched in Brussels and across the Atlantic. Both Europe and the U.S. will be backing different sides in an election contest that will have repercussions beyond Hungary’s borders. Vance’s high-profile visit, in the middle of America’s own war with Iran, is a testament to that.