Hungarians are voting in a crucial election that could unseat populist and MAGA-loving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

Hungarians voted on Sunday in what is widely considered Europe’s most consequential election this year, a vote that could unseat the European Union’s longest-serving leader and one of its biggest opponents.

It is an important moment for a populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbána running mate of President Trump, who has come a long way from his early days as a liberal, anti-Soviet activist to a Russian patriot who is today hailed by the global opposition.

Addressing his supporters on Sunday evening, Orbán’s opponent Péter Magyar said about 6 million Hungarians voted in Sunday’s election, in a country of just over 9 million people.

Magyar said that despite receiving thousands of reports of election tampering, he has “high hopes” of victory.

Earlier on Sunday, speaking to reporters after the vote, Orbán, 62, said the campaign was “a great national moment on our part” and thanked activists and supporters for their work. “I’m here to win,” he said.

Independent monitors and European Union officials have accused Orbán’s government of launching an attack on the country’s democratic institutions and the rule of law since then. In 16 years since he took over in 2010, the country dropped to the rank of the most corrupt country in the European Union, according to the UK-based anti-corruption group Transparency International.

At a polling station in Budapest on Sunday, CBS News spoke to a number of voters, all of whom said they voted for Magyar and his centrist Tiscza party.

“Orban is very against the EU and Russia, and I think that associating himself, in my opinion, with a war criminal, is not right for the country of Hungary,” said the 21-year-old who calls himself only Daniel.

Casting his vote in Budapest on Sunday, Marcell Mehringer, 21, said he was voting “mainly so that Hungary can finally be a country called Europe, and so that young people, and everyone, can do their civic duty to unite this nation a little bit and break these hateful borders.”

Orbán has been one of Mr. Trump the world’s closest allies since the American president was first elected in 2016. The relationship deepened between the two men in the last ten years. The partnership between the Trump administration and Orbán was on full display when Vice President JD Vance publicly campaigned alongside the Hungarian leader in Budapest last week.