Advocates of liberal democracy everywhere are celebrating Péter Magyar’s triumph over Viktor Orbán. But among the lessons to draw from the Hungarian experience, the most important may be that toppling an illiberal populist is not as straightforward as much of the press coverage has made it seem.

Péter Magyar’s landslide victory in Hungary has triggered a global outpouring of commentary that sometimes reads like a trashy banner ad: “This one secret technique will make your far-right populism problem disappear!” Hungary’s experience supposedly demonstrates that one need only focus on the incumbent’s corruption or unite the opposition in order to triumph.

Alas, if defeating populist autocrats were so straightforward, the Viktor Orbáns and Recep Tayyip Erdoğans of the world would have been ousted long ago. While one can indeed learn from Magyar’s multi-pronged campaign, the lessons are more subtle than the recent flurry of hot takes would suggest. Some may not be applicable to larger countries.

As a former Fidesz insider, Magyar understood that the electoral system had two vulnerabilities. Fidesz counted on the opposition always being divided, and it assumed that challengers would never gain substantial support in rural areas, where Orbán’s cronies controlled the local press (and where poorer citizens were sometimes bribed and threatened to vote for the government). Magyar exploited both premises.

In the 2022 elections, Hungarian opposition parties had indeed united, fielding as their candidate........

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