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Despite heavily tilting the electoral playing field in its favor—through extreme gerrymandering, extensive use of state resources for partisan ends, near-total media dominance, flagrant use of deepfake videos, and alleged vote-buying—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing, historic defeat in the country’s election Sunday.

Orban conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent, Tisza Party leader Peter Magyar, pledging to “serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition as well.” Voter turnout was higher than in any previous parliamentary election in Hungary since the collapse of communism in 1989.

Despite heavily tilting the electoral playing field in its favor—through extreme gerrymandering, extensive use of state resources for partisan ends, near-total media dominance, flagrant use of deepfake videos, and alleged vote-buying—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing, historic defeat in the country’s election Sunday.

Orban conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent, Tisza Party leader Peter Magyar, pledging to “serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition as well.” Voter turnout was higher than in any previous parliamentary election in Hungary since the collapse of communism in 1989.

After 16 years of Fidesz rule, what explains this startling reversal?

When entrenched, dominant-party regimes are ousted from office, it typically stems from either the incumbent’s accumulated missteps or the opposition’s scrappy resourcefulness. In Hungary, both dynamics were at play.

Fidesz entered the election burdened by three major liabilities. First, its recent economic record has been terrible. Years of fiscal mismanagement, state-capture economics, and erosion of the  rule of law left Hungary mired in........

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