Voting is over in Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is seeking to win a third consecutive term.

After running a campaign almost exclusively focused on the threat posed by migration, Orbán’s Fidesz party is expected to win a majority in parliament. However, a late push for coordination among the opposition, as well a string of corruption scandals around the government has given Orbán’s foes a glimmer of hope.

The opposition was also buoyed by a surprisingly high turnout. Two hours before the polls closed, turnout was at 63% of eligible voters, up 9% on the last election in 2014.

With no reliable exit polls, it could be some time before a clear idea of the results emerges.

Gergely Karacsony, the leading left-wing candidate for prime minster, claimed the high turnout was good news for those in favour of preventing Prime Minister Victor Orban from winning his third consecutive term.



Orbán voted at a Budapest polling station on Sunday morning, and afterwards said his campaign had focussed on migration because “this is the main question of the future”.

There were long queues at some Budapest polling stations, as well as at Hungarian embassies abroad.



During recent weeks, activists have worked to mobilise the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians living outside the country to register to vote, on the assumption that the majority of them are likely to be anti-Orbán. A video posted online from London showed a queue stretching for hundreds of metres, and the waiting time was reportedly over two hours.

Orbán, who rose to prominence in the late 1980s as a young liberal calling for Soviet troops to withdraw from Hungary, has morphed into a rightwing nationalist over the years. He served one term as prime minister between 1998 and 2002, and was then in opposition for eight years until his Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010 and 2014.



Since the refugee crisis of 2015, Orbán’s rhetoric on migration has become increasingly sharp. His government has built a fence along the country’s southern border to keep out migrants and Orbán has claimed he is fighting a conspiracy to destroy Hungary led by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

“On Sunday the future of Hungary will be irreparably determined for many decades to come,” Orbán said in his final campaign speech on Friday. “If the levy breaks, if they open the borders, if migrants enter the country, there is no way back.”

Hungary’s Fidesz party has been running on an anti-migrant message. Photograph: Darko Vojinovic/AP

Opinion polls suggest more people support a change of government than another Orbán term, but the Hungarian electoral system can deliver a strong parliamentary majority to the biggest party even if it does not win an outright majority of the votes.

At a Budapest polling station across the Danube from the Hungarian parliament, many voters said they were voting tactically in an attempt to unseat the Fidesz candidate.



“I would really like a change of government,” said 78-year-old Ildiko Nagy after voting for Karacsony’s party. “Everything about this government is awful. They have abused patriotism and created wartime hysteria in a time of peace.”

Analysts say despite a number of corruption scandals in which top Fidesz officials are implicated, the anti-migrant rhetoric has worked well enough to shore up the core Fidesz voter base.

Added to this are a number of changes to the electoral system made in recent years, most of which are likely to benefit Fidesz, and the fractured opposition, which has struggled to put on a united front against Orbán.

Across town, in the poorer Eighth District of Budapest, more voters said they had supported Fidesz. András, a 20-year-old Roma musician, said he supported the government because they had funded his orchestra. “Everything is good, I have no complaints,” he said.

The strongest opposition force is Jobbik, a far-right party that has rebranded itself as a centre-right anti-corruption force in recent years. As Orbán has moved further and further to the right, Jobbik has moved to the centre, though much of its campaigning in the regions still focuses on an anti-migrant and anti-Roma platform.

The liberal opposition is made up of a number of smaller parties, who have taken part in talks aimed at cooperation to maximise their chances. However, with a few exceptions, parties have not been able to agree on strategic withdrawals to present a single liberal candidate on the ballot.

A number of citizen groupings have been offering tactical voting advice to people on the best choice in each constituency for voters who want anyone but Orbán.

At a minimum, the opposition hopes to deprive Fidesz of its two-thirds majority, which allows changes to the constitution. At best, there is hope that a high turnout could strip Orbán of his majority completely, but Fidesz would still be the largest party and a chaotic period of coalition negotiations would then begin.