Populist Orban faces a reckoning in polls

Bloomberg

Sixteen years ago, Viktor Orban refurbished a palace overlooking the Danube River in Budapest as a new office to mark his re-election as Hungary’s prime minister. Then a surprise defeat prevented him from moving in and he spent the rest of the decade in opposition.
The older, grayer, and heavier Orban is now the ringleader of Europe’s nationalist insurgence after regaining power in 2010. The man hailed as a “great hero” by US President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon is bidding to win a third straight term on Sunday, and he’s spent about $60 million fitting out a former monastery to take up afterwards. The question is whether history will repeat itself.
Polls suggest that’s unlikely. They consistently put support for Orban’s Fidesz party at roughly equal to the entire opposition combined. But there’s growing disillusionment among many Hungarians over a culture of cronyism and the thumping victory expected just months ago now looks uncertain.
Orban already lost the two-thirds majority in parliament that allowed him to change the constitution and appoint allies to independent institutions, including the courts and chief prosecutor, after two of his lawmakers were unseated during his second term.
Further losses or the possibility of a bigger upset for the poster child of European populism and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin would resonate across Europe and particularly in its increasingly volatile east. “People are watching this election because Orban is seen as having provided the ideological and institutional template for populist movements throughout Europe,” said William Galston, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “If Orban’s support falls significantly below 50 percent then people will take it that what he and his party represents aren’t irresistible.”
The April 8 election comes less than a month after Prime Minister Robert Fico in neighbouring
Slovakia was forced to resign in the wake of mass protests over the murder of a journalist investigating government corruption.
In Hungary, the campaign by opponents has tried to nullify Orban’s anti-immigration rhetoric and focused on claims that politically connected oligarchs hold sway over the economy in what he calls his “illiberal state.”