All you need to know about Viktor Orban’s election win against the United for Hungary alliance

What was the electoral climate in Hungary? Who is Peter Marki-Zay and who were the parties contesting the national vote?

In an election underscored by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Hungarian President Viktor Orban of the Fidesz Party declared victory on April 3 for the governing coalition led by his party against the six-party Opposition alliance United for Hungary, as the vote count was underway.

Mr. Orban, seen as an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, secured his fourth term in a row as Prime Minister of Hungary in the closest-ever competition with an Opposition, as compared to the last three elections in which most predictions had sealed a comfortable win for the right-wing Fidesz.

Preliminary results with 98% of the national party list votes counted, indicated 53.1% votes in favour of Mr. Orban’s Fidesz, with 35% of the votes going to the United for Hungary Opposition-alliance, led by Peter Marki-Zay, a conservative politician with no party affiliation, who served as the Mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, a town in the south of Hungary.

“We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels,” Mr. Orban hailed his victory while addressing Fidesz Party leaders on election night in Budapest, referencing the Brussels-headquartered European Union, with which he has frequently been at loggerheads.

At the beginning of this year, the focus of Hungarian political opponents was on issues like the economy, divisive socio-cultural matters like religion, the country’s relationship with the EU, and what the Opposition described as Mr. Orban’s withdrawal from the rule of law in Hungary.

With Russia’s incursion on Hungary’s eastern neighbour Ukraine, however, the dynamics of the electoral discourse shifted for both Fidesz and the six-party Opposition.

Mr. Orban portrayed the election as a choice between war and peace. In an election rally on Friday, he said: “This isn’t our war, we have to stay out of it.”