Hungarian Prime Minister and Chairman of FIDESZ party Viktor Orban | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images Setback for Orbán raises opposition election hopes Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party rattled by surprise loss in mayoral contest.

BUDAPEST — Hungary's parliamentary election just got interesting.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party had looked to be cruising to an easy victory in the April 8 vote and possibly once again winning two-thirds of all seats, allowing it to make constitutional changes.

But Fidesz suffered a surprise setback Sunday in a mayoral election in the southern city of Hódmezővásárhely, a party stronghold for more than two decades. Independent candidate Péter Márki-Zay, supported by an array of opposition parties, won with 57 percent of the vote to the Fidesz candidate’s 41 percent.

The result rattled Fidesz and raised hopes among opposition supporters that they may be able to defeat or at least inflict major damage on Orbán, who has championed a vision of illiberal democracy and clashed repeatedly with Brussels over the rule of law, academic freedom and refugees' rights.

A senior Fidesz official interpreted the vote as a sign of "popular frustration caused by corruption cases." Orbán and his allies have repeatedly been accused of favoring friends and relatives in the award of public contracts and the regulation of private businesses. They have denied any wrongdoing.

“The number of Fidesz supporters is more or less the same as it was in [the last mayoral election in] 2014. That means that the opposition parties were very successful in mobilizing this frustration,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official said the party has reason to be worried, "especially over the psychological momentum generated by this voting.”

Pollster Median found that Fidesz’s support among all eligible voters fell from 39 percent in November to 37 percent in January.

Another sign of official alarm at the result was that state-run and pro-government media outlets initially sought to play it down, running minimal coverage. Over 100,000 Hungarians, however, watched live streams of Márki-Zay’s victory speech, in which he declared his success shows “there is hope” for Hungary.

Another Fidesz source cautioned against reading too much into the mayoral election.

“The Hódmezővásárhely result had too many local factors for it to be projected onto the national electorate,” said the source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

But, this person said, the result may still hold an important lesson for the ruling party.

“The predictions in the polls were badly out of alignment with the end result,” the Fidesz source said. “Few people will now take their findings seriously. The inference is that many people do not tell pollsters the truth.”

According to polls, Orbán is still in a very strong position compared to his rivals, though Fidesz's popularity on a national level has declined somewhat ahead of the parliamentary election.

Pollster Median found that Fidesz’s support among all eligible voters fell from 39 percent in November to 37 percent in January, while support among voters who are already sure about how they will cast their vote fell from 60 percent to 53 percent.

New model

Opposition parties and voters are now looking at Hódmezővásárhely as a possible model to emulate in the parliamentary election.

Márki-Zay — a conservative Christian and father of seven who holds a Ph.D. in economic history and speaks French, English and German — has never worked in politics before running for the mayor’s position. His campaign inspired voter turnout to shoot up from 36 percent in 2014 to 62 percent this time, despite Fidesz controlling much of the media and the appearance of anonymous pamphlets naming and condemning Márki-Zay’s supporters.

Most importantly in terms of lessons for April, although he ran as an independent on an anti-corruption platform, Márki-Zay was backed by all of Hungary’s opposition parties, from the far-right Jobbik to the Greens, liberals and Socialists.

Half of Hungary’s parliamentary seats are chosen through races in 106 districts, and some politicians and activists have long argued that the only way to defeat Orbán is by having opposition forces from across the political spectrum coordinate on which candidates to support.

But the opposition still faces significant hurdles in replicating its success in Hódmezővásárhely.

While the far-right Jobbik party has tried in recent years to move toward the political center, many liberal and left-wing voters are still highly uncomfortable with its brand of politics and history of anti-Semitism and racism. And some politicians are still hesitant about the implications of stepping aside in favor of traditional rivals.

Opposition leaders, nevertheless, are hailing the weekend’s events as a turning point.

“The ice has broken,” said Bernadett Szél, co-chair of the Green Politics Can Be Different party. “The results show us that the hate campaign [against the opposition] was unsuccessful … it is a good sign for the elections."