I live in Hungary. What Fidesz did here was full on authoritarianism. They stole a significant, visible percentage of the GDP every year, they controlled like 95% of the media (by budget), they were actively destroying the environment by giving build permits to industry and such in areas that were previously beautiful, environmentally protected lands and not forcing companies to comply with emissions and pollution regulations (e.g. battery factories).

And they were fully above the law, they have installed every member of the supreme court and heads of every law enforcement and secret agencies, so they could never be prosecuted.

Last summer they have prepared a law that would have let them prosecute, dismentle and jail all of the remaining 5% of independent media - precisely from Putin's handbook. However people organized large scale protests, so they did not dare to implement the law in the last second. This was because Orbán has built a private army, also like Putin (OMON), called TEK, but it was not big and strong enough (yet) to be able to protect them from real large scale unrests. Also, they needed to keep up some appearances, because of the EU.

They have also gerrymandered the election and changed the election laws to help them as much as possible, back when they first gained 2/3 majority. They were also outspending campaigning the whole opposition by like a 100:1 ratio, using hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal funding.

So yes, Hungary was under a full on authoritarian regime and like 5 minutes and this last election away from becoming a total dictatorship. There were basically like these three things separating us from the total dictatorship:

1. Having the 5% or so free, independent media left
2. Fidesz not cheating away the complete elections (they were cheating some and buying votes, but not on a big enough scale), only Gerrymandering and skewing it in their favor as much as possible.
3. Not building up Orbán's own personal army (TEK) enough to be able to crush any unrest or rebellion.

All three of these points were most definitely getting solved in the next four years, if they gained another victory this past election, completely solidifying their power fully and indefinitely, just like Putin has done in the 2000s.

This was Hungary's very last chance of avoiding to become a full on dictatorship. And we've used it spectacularly well.

Really depends on the situation. If you have elections and the government has to honor the result it's very possible.

There have been numerous of examples of a near complete state capture being reversed in recent history such as Hungary. Voting is extremely important.

I mean, also in liberal democracies your vote is more of a suggestion. The recent French parliamentary election is a prime example of that. Another good example would be the multiple times that electors from the US electoral college voted against what the electorate in their state voted for.