Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week I come to you from the banks of the beautiful blue Danube in downtown Budapest, where I'll talk to you about the exciting Hungarian elections. Let's dive in.

Yes, you heard it right. I'm sitting here in Budapest talking to you about what's going to go on on Sunday in the internationally observed Hungarian elections.

Now, most of the time, a small country of about 9, 10 million people in Central Europe is not going to attract attention.

But you know about this because Vice President J.D. Vance came,

as well as facilitating phone calls from President Donald Trump

to endorse the sitting Prime Minister, Victor Orban.

Well, if you're thinking as an American, you think, well, Trump's endorsement, this is a guy who's run the government for a while.

Of course, Orban's going to get reelected.

Oh, contrary, Pierre.

This is a dog fight.

And let me try and explain why by putting Hungarian politics into context.

Victor Orban came to power in 2010. He had actually been

Prime Minister before. He has been head of the Fidesz Party since 1993. Fidesz is a party that

runs in coalition with the Christian Democratic Party. So here it's known as Fidesz dashKDP, but it is largely dominated by the Fidesz party,

and often the KDNP gets pushed aside or shortened off. What that means is that he has been around

for longer than virtually anybody in Hungarian politics. He has seen off competitors. He has

come from defeat to victory to defeat again, to come back again. And when he came back in 2010,

defeating the socialist incumbent prime minister, what he decided was never again. The Hungarian

constitution can be amended by a two-thirds vote and such was the public

revulsion over the socialist government's mishandling of the economy during the

great financial crash and then a tape that leaked out from the prime minister

telling insiders that they could basically just lie about what was going on in the economy

...