This weekend will be a crucial test for the opposition in central Europe’s two populist strongholds as liberal forces in both countries attempt to win back ground from nationalists.

In Poland, the opposition has described Sunday’s parliamentary elections as an “existential” battle to prevent the ruling nationalist party from gaining another four years in charge to reshape the country.

In Hungary, the battle is already seen as mostly lost, with the far-right government of Viktor Orbán firmly entrenched after winning a third consecutive term last year. The goal for the opposition in local elections on Sunday is to win back at least some momentum. If the unified opposition candidate can take back control of the capital Budapest from Orbán’s Fidesz party, it would be a rare setback for Hungary’s anti-migration prime minister, who has talked about a project to reshape the country by 2030.

Polls suggest the races will be close. But in both countries the ruling parties, which have drawn ire from the European commission and rights organisations, look the more likely to win. The opposition has also been criticised for fractious infighting and political own goals that have not helped their chances in either country in recent years.

In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) has the support of more than 40% of Poles, according to most surveys. PiS won elections in 2015 and has embarked on a programme of massive social spending, winning widespread support.

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Simultaneously, the party has been accused of attacking the judiciary, engaging in a culture war and, in recent months, using its stable of loyal media to launch a war on “LGBT ideology”, claiming the party is defending true, traditional Polishness.

Opposition parties have no illusions that PiS will be the biggest party, but there is some hope that it will not be able to form a government, and that liberal and leftist opposition forces could govern as a broad coalition. Due to the complicated arithmetic in the Polish system, a lot could depend on whether two smaller parties, one of them from the far right, make it past the 5 per cent threshold for entry into parliament.

Much of the support for PiS comes from smaller towns and the countryside, where the social spending has made an impact.

“We know how to convince people in the big cities, our problem is how to convince people in the rural areas in the south and east, especially when there’s such an impact of government propaganda,” said Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and member of the Civic Coalition opposition.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, with Sadiq Khan during the London’s mayor visit to the Polish capital last month. Photograph: Omar Marques/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock

In the European elections in May, PiS dominated after an opposition campaign aimed squarely at attacking the government appeared to mobilise PiS voters more than opposition supporters. Going into this vote, the prime ministerial candidate from the liberal Civic Coalition, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, has used the slogan: “Cooperation not quarrelling”.

However, Civic Coalition has been criticised for failing to articulate a message that could appeal to swing voters rather than simply its core vote. “I’m trying to support them but it’s really hard, they can’t even present their own programme properly,” said Katarzyna Kasia, a philosophy professor and contributor to the Kultura Liberalna journal. “You can’t build a political strategy on saying PiS is horrible. It’s important, but there has to be more of a message.”

In Poland, there are still plenty of opposition-friendly news outlets and a vibrant political debate. In Hungary, Orbán is further down the road towards full control, having suffocated much of the country’s independent media and implemented a kind of crony capitalism, all the while pumping out daily messaging warning Hungarians their lives are at risk from Muslim migrants.

Profile Viktor Orbán Show Hide Born in 1963 in Székesfehérvár in central Hungary, Viktor Orbán has been leader of the Fidesz national conservative party in two long stints since 1993. He has been Hungary’s prime minister between 1998 and 2002, and again since 2010. After two years of military service he studied law in Budapest, and then political science at Pembroke College, Oxford.

For nationalists across Europe, Orbán has become a hero, the embodiment of a nativist leader willing to eschew liberal political correctness and speak aggressively about the need to defend so-called Christian Europe. Steve Bannon has called him Trump before Trump, and Nigel Farage and Italy’s Matteo Salvini are admirers.

For many liberals, and increasingly for some of his supposed allies in the EPP, he signifies all that is rotten, corrupt and downright scary in contemporary politics on the continent. “The age of liberal democracy is at an end,” Orbán told the Hungarian parliament shortly after Fidesz won a third successive electoral victory in 2018. “It is no longer able to protect people’s dignity, provide freedom, guarantee physical security or maintain Christian culture.” His messaging, repeated in speeches and interviews ad nauseam, is that he is on a mission to protect Hungary and the rest of Europe from the evils of migration from the Middle East and Africa. He has frequently accused the Hungarian-born financier George Soros of a conspiracy to overrun Europe with Muslim migrants. Orbán’s Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament, which gives him leeway to make sweeping constitutional changes, and he has spoken of a plan to reshape the country over the next decade. He has installed loyalists in previously independent institutions, put a vast media network under the control of cronies and brushed off protests from the disgruntled urban elites. One thing Orbán’s admirers and detractors agree on is that he has become symbolic of something bigger than the fate of a smallish central European state with a population of fewer than 10 million. The man himself clearly relishes his increasingly large role in European political discourse. Frustrated with Brussels and other European critics, Orbán has built alliances with neighbouring countries, notably throughout the V4, which comprises Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, all of whose leaders have at times expressed varying degrees of unhappiness with the EU, and whose unity in messaging is growing. For Orbán, the idea that he is up against an exhausted, decaying vision of Europe is one that he has returned to again and again in his speeches. In October 2018, he implicitly compared today’s EU to the Nazis, Soviets and other imperial powers. Shaun Walker in Budapest Photograph: Bernadett Szabó/X02784

“If they lose these elections, it’s over for some of these opposition parties,” said Edit Zgut, a Hungarian political analyst based in Warsaw.

“I turned to politics because I feel this is the last chance,” said András Pikó, a former journalist who is standing as the united opposition candidate for the eighth district of Budapest. For the first time since Orbán came to power in 2010, the opposition has managed to coordinate efforts and run single candidates in many races.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A billboard urging voters to back Gergely Karácsony in the Budapest mayoral race. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images

The most symbolic battle is for mayor of the capital, Hungary’s only big city and still a relatively liberal and cosmopolitan place in comparison to the rest of the country. Here, the opposition forces have united around 44-year-old Gergely Karácsony. The run-up to the vote has been lively, with spoiler candidates, police searches of an opposition office and dirt leaked anonymously on candidates from both sides of the divide.

Karácsony’s office was bugged and recordings in which he discussed politicians from other opposition parties were leaked. “It makes you feel like you are in Moscow,” he said.

In Poland, the opposition looks at how Orbán has cemented control over the last decade and wonders nervously if the country might be on the same path.

“This is not a normal election because values and institutions are at stake. This is an existential choice,” said Trzaskowski.