Hello and welcome to the CR podcast, unpacking Europe. This is Jay Kejaki, a senior research fellow at the CR.

I am your host today and we are covering Hungary's landslide election outcome. I am joined by

Zhuzana Selenny, a founding director of the CEO Democracy Institute's Leadership Academy,

and even more importantly for today's discussion, a founding member of Fidesz, previously a former

MP in the Hungarian parliament, one of the most clear-eyed analysts of Hungary

and its democratic processes. So, Zhuzha, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thank you for

having me. So I guess my first question is, did you expect to see this result? Did you expect

the opposition to sweep away 16 years of Fides's rule and

deliver all ban such a blow? I think I started to believe that this was possible something like

three, four weeks ago. Up until then, I really was not sure. Despite the fact that Tisa Party, the opposition party, was leading the polls with 10%, robust 10% for over a year.

But because of the Hungarian electoral system and the captured state wreaked the democratic chances of any opposition so severely over the last

several years that we could not be sure whether despite of popularity of an opposition party

can still can manage.

Right. And so we are talking on Monday, the day after the election.

Where do we stand now?

And what can we expect in the next few weeks in Hungary? What are the biggest challenges that Magyar faces?

So first of all, the result is really outstanding. Even for those who could imagine Tisa victory,

this level of landslide is really a surprise to every analyst. Though we could imagine that if someone, because a Hungarian electoral system is very

difficult to beat Fides in local districts, but if someone can manage this, then this system benefits the winner

at the end of the game. So if someone starts to win systematically the local district,

it can win big. And this is what we saw actually.as Pisa Party received 45% of popular votes,

and TISA received 54% of the popular votes, and Fides got 38.

...