Voting begins in Hungary with record turnout in first hour of high-stakes election

Polls opened at 6 am in Hungary's pivotal vote which could end Viktor Orbán's 16-year rule.

After the first hour, voter turnout stood at 3.46 percent by 7 a.m., which is nearly double that of four years ago. In 2022, turnout was 1.8 percent in the first count taken at the same time.

Concluding an intensive campaign, the Tisza Party and Fidesz held their last campaign rallies before huge crowds on Saturday, showing that Hungary is definitely ready to find out who the country's next leader will be. The result of Sunday's vote will determine whether Viktor Orbán and Fidesz will continue to move Hungary further from the EU and the Western alliance system and closer to Moscow, or a victory of Péter Magyar's Tisza Party will set the country on a path to repairing its fractured relationship with the EU and put Hungary back on a path of growth.

In the event of a close race, however, voters may need to wait longer than they would like, to find out. If the race is too close to call, results may not be known until the Saturday following the vote, i.e. until 100 percent of the ballots have been processed, the National Election Office (NVI) has announced. This is because it is possible that in some constituencies, and on the national list as well – compared to the preliminary data released on election day – the results could change by the end of the week, after 100 percent of the votes have been processed.

In most polling stations, the counting of votes will begin immediately after 7:00 PM on Sunday, so the publication of preliminary results – along with an indication of the number of votes counted – is expected to begin around 8:00 PM. At the same time, the National Election Office (NVI) will begin counting votes received by mail and will publish the results continuously.

A total of 192,090 absentee ballots had already been cast by Thursday morning, according to data released by the National Election Office that day.

Votes cast at foreign missions and absentee ballots, as well as mail-in ballots cast at foreign missions, will arrive at the National Election Office no later than the fourth day after the election.

The NVI will count the mail-in ballots, sort the votes cast at diplomatic missions and absentee ballots according to individual constituencies, and then, on Friday, April 17, they will hand these over to the relevant election offices, where the designated polling stations will count them on April 17 or 18.

Based on the above, on the evening of election day, the counting committees and the NVI – depending on turnout – will count approximately 92-95 percent of the votes cast for the national list, while the counting committees will count 94-97 percent of the votes cast for single-member constituencies.