11 April 2026

2026-04-10 | UPDATES #169 | The Vance effect. MAGA landed in Budapest and Orbán’s poll numbers took a tumble. Two days out from the most consequential Hungarian election in a generation, and the numbers on your screen tell a story Viktor Orbán does not want you to read. Polymarket: Péter Magyar, seventy-two percent. Viktor Orbán, twenty-eight. A cliff edge. A free fall.

The blue line rising almost vertically in the final week — the red line in freefall since mid-March.
Into this catastrophe, straight off the plane from Washington, walks the Vice President of the United States, and makes the situation so much worse for Orban and Moscow.

On Tuesday, April 7th, JD Vance touched down in Budapest with his wife Usha in tow, a phalanx of Secret Service, and a mission so naked it embarrassed even the MAGA-friendly Hungarian press. He was there, officially, for something called the “Day of Hungarian American Friendship.” He was the star turn at a campaign rally as a foreign politician five days before a foreign election. But this is not political or international diplomacy as normal. That is not how American vice presidents usually behave. As NBC News noted, it is a flat break from decades of US practice of staying out of other countries’ campaigns.