Polish analysis finds that Orbán has lost the digital battle against Magyar

According to Res Futura, a Polish analyst team, the balance of power between Viktor Orbán and Péter Magyar in the digital sphere has shifted dramatically after Meta and Google changed their policies on political advertising. For more than a decade, Viktor Orbán and Fidesz maintained undisputed hegemony in the Hungarian digital space, basing their power on huge followings and unlimited advertising budgets, but the situation changed radically after a total ban on paid online political advertising was introduced in Europe.

According to analysts, Péter Magyar has generated nearly 16 million views with his video content on social media in recent days. While Viktor Orbán was able to generate 1 million likes from his 1.6 million followers, Magyar achieved 1.3 million reactions with a much smaller fan base. According to the report, this means that with 40 percent less content, Magyar achieved a 30 percent better result than the prime minister. However, the most important battle took place in the area of shares, where Magyar defeated his rival with 93,000 shares compared to Orbán’s 68,000.

Over the past six and a half years, Hungarian politicians have spent 3 billion forints (nearly 7 million 750 thousand euros) on advertising on Google and more than 18 billion on Facebook. These figures sometimes exceeded the limits set by the campaign financing law, but for a while the government did nothing about this anomaly, until it finally rewrote the law in June. As the amounts indicate, the parties relied heavily on Facebook ads. This means that a total of 7 billion forints were spent on promoting the 15 most advertised pages, with an overwhelming majority of them linked to Fidesz: the top 13 spots in the top 15, and 6.5 billion forints out of the 7 billion forints are associated with pages linked to the ruling party.

Despite the ban on political advertising, Fidesz did not always follow the rules. Balázs Németh, the spokesperson for the Fidesz faction, went so far as to say that they were deliberately pushing the boundaries, and questioned why anyone would make an issue of it, arguing that Meta will know what it wants to ban and what it doesn't. There was a lot that slipped through the filter: Fidesz was able to freely advertise on Facebook via its Digital Civic Circles, while a total of 84 percent of the Fidesz faction's ads were banned for violating the rules.

The Polish analysts say that Magyar has built an "army of free content distributors," which eliminated the need for advertising budgets and a TV presence. Meanwhile, Orbán has become a minority in the online space, with only his most loyal supporters listening to his voice. The extremely negative sentiment under the Prime Minister's posts suggests that his profile has become more of a place for debate than a mobilization platform. In contrast, Magyar is building a narrative based on enthusiasm, which Facebook's operating mechanism is rewarding with organic reach.

During the period under review, i.e., February and March 2026, Magyar achieved an average of 2,325 shares per post, while Viktor Orbán averaged only about 1,000. This means that the prime minister's posts generate 27 percent fewer shares overall and 57 percent fewer shares per post. According to the analysis, this means that Orbán's supporters tend to be passive consumers.

According to the analysts, Magyar's 16 million video views are an indicator of a new hierarchy in the media market, as this number now competes with the biggest TV channels. While this may be true in terms of viewership, it should be noted that a significant portion of television channels in Hungary are still controlled by Fidesz, and this, combined with the party's dominance over the media market means that the ruling party still has exclusive access to a large number of voters.

Without doubt, these video views are beneficial for Magyar: Facebook rewards videos that people watch for a long time and actively comment on. Thanks to the thousands of comments, Magyar's video posts appear in the news feeds of a huge number of people, with the algorithm doing the promotional work for him. According to the Polish analysts, Orbán's communication, on the other hand, is based on static images, which are not as successful in news feeds. "Orbán is essentially trying to communicate with the nation through digital flyers in a world that watches Netflix and TikTok videos," they write.

According to analysts, Magyar's message is based on the narrative that he is "the insider who recognised the truth". His topics directly affect the everyday lives and sense of justice of Hungarians: they include economic problems, such as fuel prices, and promises of uncovering evidence of government corruption, as well as local issues such as illegal landfills and battery factories. Orbán has retreated into the realm of geopolitical fear, with a message that is defensive and builds on finding external enemies, such as Ukraine, dehumanizing the opposition, and fearmongering.

The analysts point out that although Orbán posts frequently, he does so with low efficiency, and this, combined with the high number of negative reactions, is not marketable for the algorithm. According to the analysts, this is leading to an organic decline, prompting the algorithm to push Orbán's posts into the background for uncertain users, while Magyar will come to the fore for free.

Telex's own analysis, Lájkbajnokság (The Championship of Likes) measured a similar advantage for Tisza recently. After 130 episodes of our series, this was the first time that most of the competitors in the top 15-list did not come from Fidesz, or that they did not collect the most likes overall. Tisza, on the other hand, is flooding Facebook, with six Tisza politicians among the frontrunners, racking up a total of 14.4 million likes, compared to the 8.7 million collected by four Fidesz politicians.