Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia and Viktor Orban of Hungary had cultivated ties with President Trump and echoed claims about a “deep state” and foreign forces allegedly seeking to remove them from power. Yet both leaders chose a different course when their own elections turned against them.
Vucic quickly accepted defeat in Serbia’s general election on October 25. Orban had conceded six months earlier after losing in Hungary. Their decisions contrasted with Trump, who continues to maintain that he won the 2020 presidential election, making him an outlier among several politically similar nationalist leaders.
The concessions highlighted the difference between accepting electoral results and denying them despite the vote count. They also renewed questions about whether candidates defeated in closely contested congressional races would concede or dispute the results.
In Brazil, the losing Trump-backed candidate Flávio Bolsonaro challenged the presidential election held on the same day as Serbia’s vote and called for its annulment. However, he left for the United States rather than attempting to rally supporters to overturn the result, as his father, Jair Bolsonaro, had done after his defeat in 2022 and Trump had done two years earlier.
Sources: The New York Times World.