CNN Data Guru Finds Vance’s Campaign Visit May Have Actually Hurt Viktor Orbán’s Chances

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten found Thursday that Vice President JD Vance’s campaign trip to Hungary to stump for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is seeking re-election, had “no impact” and may have actually coincided with his numbers dropping.

Vance arrived in the Hungarian capital of Budapest Tuesday morning to echo President Donald Trump in offering the prime minister his endorsement and holding a rally to hype support. The visit drew scrutiny and backlash from lawmakers across both parties because Orbán occupies the odd position of being seen as a key ally by both the Trump administration and Russia.

For Trump, Orbán is a longstanding Euroskeptic able to frustrate the European Union on major issues. From Moscow’s perspective, Orbán has played a significant role in slowing or complicating the EU’s sanctions packages and holding up major financial support measures for Ukraine.

On Thursday, however, after Vance had traveled home, Enten took a look at whether the vice president’s efforts had made a difference. Prediction markets noted a small change, but, the data analyst said, but in the wrong direction:

What are the prediction markets showing? To me looks like there’s a real chance that Viktor Orbán goes down to defeat. This is the Kalshi prediction market, look, chance Orbán is Hungary’s prime minister after the 2026 election – you go back to the beginning of the year it was basically an even split 48% chance that, in fact, he would be the prime minister after the election. Down it goes, down it goes! We’re looking now at just a 31% chance, about a 1 in 3 shot.

And I was also looking at the numbers pre and post JD Vance visit. If anything they might have gone down slightly. But there really has been no impact. JD Vance not helping out an ally of his abroad.

Vance’s visit, he continued, was part of a “larger picture” in that “58% of Americans believe that the Trump administration is too focused on things abroad” with too little focus on domestic matters.

Between January 2025 and the present, Enten followed, Vance himself has seen a 21-point polling swing into the negative, from +3 points to -18 points.

“Down he goes! JD Vance getting dragged down along with the president of the United States,” he said. “Vance is not doing hot to trot at this point.

Watch via CNN.

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