With the results of the national election still coming in, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Sunday night claimed victory, telling a crowd of supporters that his win is "so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels."
This was a reference to the European Union. The right-wing Orbán routinely clashes with the EU, and over his last 12 years in power, he has been a vocal critic of migrants and LGBTQ rights and taken control of several of Hungary's democratic institutions, The Associated Press reports.
"The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics, and patriotic politics have won," Orbán told supporters. "We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future."
Orbán is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and on Sunday he accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being an "overwhelming force" against him.
With roughly 91 percent of ballots tallied, Orbán's Fidesz-led coalition has 53 percent of the vote. United for Hungary, the opposition coalition, has a little over 34 percent of the vote. The right-wing Our Homeland Movement looks to have received more than 6 percent of the vote, exceeding the 5 percent threshold necessary to gain seats in parliament.
In Hungary, Orbán allies control many of the news outlets, giving them pro-government agendas, AP reports. The electoral map is also heavily gerrymandered, and opposition parties and international election observers say this all makes it difficult to go up against Orbán.
"Hungary seems to have reached a point of no return," political scientist Edit Zgut with the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw told AP. "The key lesson is that the playing field is tilted so much that it became almost impossible to replace Fidesz in elections." Read more at The Associated Press.