> Orban doesn’t need to crack down on political opposition he has a strong majority in his country.[1]

Erdogan had the majority of votes go his way in the last election. Also Putin. :)

Of course gerrymandering is an age old tactic:

> First, the party rewrote the entire Hungarian constitution in secret. Parliament passed the new constitution after only nine days of debate. Changes included a restructuring of Hungarian elections, such that more than half of parliamentary representatives would be chosen through single-member, American-style districts (the remainder are determined by a national proportional-vote share). In drawing the new districts, Fidesz abused a rule that allowed the government to vary them in size from roughly 60,000 to 90,000 people.

> The new map packed opposition voters into a handful of larger districts, diluting their votes, while pro-Fidesz voters were distributed among smaller districts. This gerrymandered system would allow Fidesz to fall short of a popular-vote majority but still win a two-thirds majority in Parliament—something that happened not once but twice, in 2014 and 2018.

> A blizzard of other electoral changes accompanied the redistricting. Each was incremental, and potentially even defensible in isolation. But in combination, the laws erected extraordinary barriers that would keep opposition parties from winning elections. For example, the old system had allowed for a runoff in any district where the victorious candidate got less than 50 percent of the vote. The new system abolished the runoff, allowing a party to win a district with a mere plurality. At the same time, Fidesz created a rule that required national parties to compete in at least 27 single-member districts—even as the party passed laws that made it trickier for small parties to unite on a joint list. The result was that the various opposition parties were basically forced to split the anti-Fidesz vote in many districts, allowing Orbán’s candidates to win with relatively small pluralities.

* https://archive.ph/6DiTT / https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/07/wh...

The trick in 'modern' authoritarian systems is (often) to not bother going after your opposition, but mostly trying to stay in power (see above) and helping your friends:

> The railway and stadium have been pilloried by the prime minister’s critics as vanity projects. But they have something else in common. Both were built, in part, by Felcsut’s mayor, and a childhood friend of Mr Orban, Lorinc Meszaros. Until a few years ago, Mr Meszaros was a gas fitter. Thanks to winning state contracts, he jumped to number five in this year’s list of the wealthiest Hungarians compiled by website Napi.hu. In a year, his fortune soared from Ft23bn (€73m) to Ft120bn.

* https://archive.ph/v8f6R / https://www.ft.com/content/ecf6fb4e-d900-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b...

> I guess you have a wrong opinion about Hungary and Orban because the media doesn’t like him because he is a pain in the ass for many plans of the European Union and gets bad reporting.

The Cato Institute called out Hungary in their most recent Human Freedom Report:

> Since 2007, the high point in human freedom, a minority of jurisdictions have increased their level of freedom, but many of them, such as Myanmar, began from a very low base, and many others experienced only minor improvements. The vast majority of jurisdictions saw declines. Among the countries and territories that deteriorated the most are Nicaragua, Syria, Hong Kong, Egypt, Turkey, and Hungary (see Table 3).

* https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2023-12/human-free...

* https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023