Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has conceded defeat in a key election, ending 16 years in power.

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán it is expected to lose in the national elections, while the leader of the opposition Peter Magyar will win in the parliament. It is a negative result in an election considered to be the most consequential in Europe this year.

Orban, the European Union’s longest-serving leader and longtime ally of President Trump, conceded defeat on Sunday night after what he called a “painful” election result, ending his 16 years in power.

“I congratulate the winning team,” Orbán told the Budapest crowd. “We will work for the Hungarian nation and our country and the opposition parties.”

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Magyar said Orban confessed to him on the phone. “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just congratulated me on the phone for our victory,” Magyar wrote.

Official early results, with 37 percent of voters, show Magyar’s party holding an 11-point lead over Orban’s party. That estimate will change as more votes are counted.

Speaking to his supporters early Sunday evening, 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.

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 was one of Mr. Trump the world’s closest allies since the first American president was 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.