Roma Voters Just Delivered a Democratic Masterclass in Hungary. Now Tisza Must Deliver for Them.

Across Europe, politicians assume that Roma don’t usually vote and, when they do, vote for parties in power—through clientelist control, economic dependence, coercion, vote-buying. Roma don’t make political choices; they only survive. In Hungary’s parliamentary election, Roma voters have just destroyed that myth.

This happened despite everything. Roma faced the full weight of Fidesz’s clientelist apparatus. The public works (közmunka) programme functioned as economic coercion: vote wrong, lose your job. This was laid bare by The Price of a Vote, a documentary revealing systematic coercion through public works schemes. Just before the election, a government minister described Roma as a “labour reserve” for toilet-cleaning jobs, assuming that even such humiliating public insults wouldn’t turn Roma voters against Fidesz’s economic coercion.

However, Fidesz faced negative reactions from Roma, especially in the online sphere, and when Péter Magyar, leader of the opposition Tisza party, announced he would place four Roma on his electoral list, government-aligned counter-narratives surged 614% in a single day. For the first time, the Roma vote was seen as a high-priority electoral threat by a party that had controlled it for 16 years.

In constituencies with high concentrations of Roma, against all odds, turnout jumped from 63.84% in 2022 to 72.5% in 2026. On top of that, Roma voters made their choices very clear.

Three Messages

An analysis by the Roma for Democracy Foundation of 149 municipalities and 44 constituencies with significant numbers of Roma shows that Roma voters made their position clear to all three main contenders.

Fidesz: Punished. The party’s vote swing averaged -16.8 percentage points, and in high-concentration constituencies losses reached -26.9 points. Their margin shrank from +27.5 points to -7.6 points. This was punishment for 16 years of institutional violence.

Mi Hazánk: Rejected. Hungary’s far-right extremist party declined even where Roma turnout surged and economic conditions were harshest. Overall, Mi Hazánk's average share of the vote decreased by 0.63%. Anti-fascism, despite the forced position of deep poverty, is a political choice of Hungary’s Roma.

Tisza: Given a chance. Péter Magyar’s opposition gained 19.02 percentage points, flipping many constituencies with a high concentration of Roma from Fidesz to opposition control. Specifically, in the 44 constituencies with a high concentration of Roma voters, Tisza won 36 seats. Notably, all of these constituencies had been held by Fidesz since 2022, with an average margin of around 28%. The highest gains came where Roma mobilisation was strongest—and where suppression was most intense. For example, in Borsod 6, Tisza won by just under 5 points. Roma voters delivered more than that margin on their own. Take them out of the picture and Fidesz would have held the constituency.

What Tisza Now Owes

Before the election, it was not clear whether Roma voters had a meaningful choice. What Fidesz did and didn’t do for Roma for 16 years is well known. On the other hand, Tisza placed Roma candidates on its list, but its 240-page programme contained no structural reforms that would lift Roma from the margins of economic and political life. Yet Roma decided to give Tisza a chance. 

Four Roma MPs from Tisza were elected to the National Assembly—Erika Jójárt, István Gyöngyösi, Mihály Balogh and Krisztián Kőszegi—along with a Roma MP from Fidesz, Attila Sztojka. This is the highest Roma representation in Hungary’s democratic history, even though Roma constitute 8–10% of Hungary’s population, and proportional representation would mean 13–17 seats in the 199-seat parliament. 

However, this isn’t about individual MPs. It’s about whether Tisza has the accountability to end—not rebrand—16 years of institutional violence against Roma.

The chance the Roma gave to Tisza, therefore, should translate into concrete action on the following questions.

Will Tisza make its four new Roma MPs—Jójárt, Gyöngyösi, Balogh, Kőszegi—agents of structural change rather than mere symbols of inclusion? Will the party that received Roma voters’ strategic support honour that choice with structural reform, or will representation remain just a performance?

Will Tisza enforce school segregation rulings that have been ignored for years, or manage segregation under progressive branding?

Will Tisza dismantle the közmunka programme that traps Roma workers in below-minimum-wage municipal labour as economic coercion, or rebrand it as opportunity?

Will Tisza democratise minority self-governments captured by Fidesz loyalists, or leave the same system in place?

Will Tisza redirect public and EU funds that disappeared into phantom programmes toward strategic investments in Roma arts and culture, education, entrepreneurship and businesses, and democratic empowerment, or continue business as usual with different beneficiaries?

What This Means for Europe

Tisza’s choices will reverberate beyond Hungary, because the assumptions that sustained decades of policy failure toward Roma across Europe just died.

The assumption that Roma can be ignored because they vote for whoever holds power—dead. The assumption that economic exclusion alone drives voters toward the far right—dead. The assumption that Roma don’t make strategic political choices—destroyed by a show of political agency that European politicians and pundits said was impossible.