Co-chair of Germany’s largest opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Alice Weidel has accused the European Union of ‘desperately’ trying to overthrow Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government ahead of the April election by manipulating polling data and backing Kyiv’s move to block oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline.
‘They want Orbán gone, and they are willing to use any means to achieve it,’ Weidel wrote in a post on X on Wednesday, 25 February, also labelling Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar as the EU’s ‘puppet’.
Weidel shared a post by Irish economist Philip Pilkington commenting on a recent survey by opposition-leaning Medián, which showed the Tisza party with a 20 percentage point lead over the governing Fidesz–KDNP alliance (55 per cent to 35 per cent).
‘The increasingly desperate Hungarian opposition is releasing really crazy polls now,’ Pilkington wrote, arguing that the situation resembles the run-up to Georgia’s 2024 election, where opposition overpolling preceded post-election unrest.
Hungarian opposition pollsters have a track record of significant inaccuracies, often underpolling Fidesz while overstating support for its challengers. Publicus, for example, missed the outcome of the 2022 parliamentary election by 20 percentage points. Medián itself underestimated Fidesz by 7 points in its final pre-election survey, while Orbán’s party ultimately secured a 20-point victory, winning 54.1 per cent against 34.1 per cent for the united opposition.
Despite this record, Western media outlets frequently amplify such polling data. Following Medián’s latest survey, outlets such as Bloomberg and Reuters quickly reported the figures, presenting them as evidence of Orbán’s declining support.
A particularly contentious example is POLITICO Brussels’ Poll of Polls aggregation, which in November 2025 shifted from showing Fidesz slightly ahead to indicating a nine-point lead for Tisza after removing two pollsters whose data had placed the governing party in front.
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