When Hungary's populist leader, Viktor Orbán, swept the board in national and local elections four years ago, few towns resisted his self-proclaimed "polling booth revolution". One interesting exception, however, was the prime minister's hometown of Felcsút: a tiny, impoverished village of 1,700 residents 25 miles west of Budapest.

But Felcsút didn't hold out for long. Orbán soon replaced the mayor, György Varga, with his own man and built a 3.8bn forint (£10.3m) football stadium, which is to open later this month.

"This stadium will seat more people than there are villagers in Felcsút," says Zoltán Somogyi, an analyst at the thinktank Political Capital.

Welcome to the Hungary of Viktor Orbán, the country's dominant politician and prime minister since 2010 with the biggest majority of any EU leader. Orbán's Fidesz party, which has more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament, faces a re-election contest on Sunday. But in truth the only question is how much they win by.

Orbán has faced constant accusations of undemocratic tendencies throughout his term. Fidesz rewrote the constitution without consultation, and have already amended it five times. The opposition say Fidesz have turned state media into government mouthpieces. They have altered electoral rules and constituency boundaries to improve their chances of re-election still further. They have awarded corporate tax breaks to football funding, which has covered 70% of the cost of Orbán's stadium in Felcsút. And, critics say, they look after their own.

The Felcsút example is a neat microcosm. The new arena is unfeasibly large, dwarfing Felcsút's one-storey buildings. Locals have taken to calling it Sauron's Castle, in a reference to Tolkien. Visitors are not welcome yet, however; the project has a special classified status and the building site just off the village's main road is zealously guarded.

The village's new mayor, Lörinc Mészáros, has seen his own fortunes rise in tandem with those of the village. He heads the nearby Ferenc Puskás football academy, which was worth 150,000 forints in 2004, but now has assets of over 6bn forints. Mészáros's personal wealth has similarly rocketed, to the extent that he was a new entry on Hungary's top 100 rich list in 2013. Little of that money has filtered down to the local residents, however. In fact Felcsút has "underprivileged village" status and still applies each year for 15m forints in special government aid to cover its energy bills.

Viktor Orbán (right) chats to Fifa president Sepp Blatter as they prepare to present an award honouring Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskás in 2009. Photograph: Imre Foeldi/EPA

Krisztina Ferenczi, an investigative journalist who has just published Narancsbör ("Orange Peel"), a book about Orbán's finances, says Mészáros's job is to enforce Orbán's will in Felcsút. "He governs over 600 jobs in the village, they are totally dependent on him. Everybody has to eat from Mészáros's hands because every business is connected to him. If you are not on good terms with him, you are ruined."

"Orbán is building a system whereby education is irrelevant and it's all about which family you are born into. They look down on poor people, as if it is a sin to be punished for. All their laws reflect that."

Orbán has similarly remade the political and legal system, so that when Hungarians go to the polls on Sunday it will be to vote in a hugely altered electoral system.

Hungarians vote for both a local constituency MP and on a party-list system for regional representatives, and one new law, for example, allows Hungary's system of "compensation seats" to be granted even to the winner of a single-member constituency.

Election analyst Róbert László says the changes always seem to tip the balance towards Fidesz. "Whether Hungary is still a democracy is not a yes or no question, but the direction is wrong," he says. "There are so many elements to the new laws that benefit Fidesz.

"Compensating the losing candidate is absolutely logical in a mixed electoral system of single member mandates and party lists. Compensating the winner is absolutely illogical and goes against this principle. But the Fidesz politicians say that every vote counts only once, and technically that's true."

But he draws the line at comparisons with the "managed democracies" that are all the rage further east. "I don't think we are in a Russia-like situation," he says. "I think the election will be free but not fair."

Orbán's political life has been entwined with football from the start, and the holders of Hungary's three highest offices once played in the same five-a-side team: president János Áder, house speaker László Köver and Orbán himself.

But Orbán's penchant for moving the goalposts is not confined to footballing and political arenas. Some see a creeping attempt to own words and cultural icons. Fidesz' nationalisation of tobacco shops has now resulted in the word "Nemzeti" (national) on every street corner. Plans to build a memorial to the German occupation have upset Jewish groups, who saw it as a rewriting of history.

"Its like the old saying: Hungary belongs to the Hungarians. Yes, this is part of the plan. The government lays claim to lots of things they consider 'national'," says Somogyi.

The leader of the opposition repeatedly refers to Orbán as "the Felcsútian Maradona". Somogyi has a different analogy. He says Hungary's prime minister would have made a great football manager, but "Orbán likes to change the rules of the game. He has at least 14 players on the field, including two goalkeepers, and the referee is his best friend."