Hungarians handed Prime Minister Viktor Orban another four years in power, election results showed on Monday, while one in every five voters backed anti-Semitic right-wing Jobbik.

Orban has clashed repeatedly with EU and foreign investors over his unorthodox policies, and after Sunday's win, big businesses were bracing for another term of unpredictable and, for some of them, hostile measures.

But many Hungarians see Orban, a 50-year-old former dissident against Communist rule, as a champion of national interests. They also like the fact that under his government personal income tax and household power bills have fallen.

After 99 percent of the ballots were counted from Sunday's parliamentary vote, an official projection gave Orban's Fidesz party 133 of the 199 seats, guaranteeing that it will form the next government.

That tally also gave Orban's party the two-thirds majority needed for it to change the constitution, but only by one seat.

Final results could still push Fidesz back below the threshold.

The same projection gave the Socialist-led leftist alliance 38 seats, while far-right Jobbik was on 23 seats.

Hungary's forint currency weakened 0.2 percent in early trade, while Budapest's main equity index fell 1.3 percent by 0848 GMT.

Market players believe the central bank, led by a close Orban ally, could weaken the currency further, a risky strategy at a time when investors are already jittery about emerging markets.

Jobbik's performance is being watched closely for clues about how other nationalist right-wing parties, such as France's Front National and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, will perform in European Parliament elections next month.

In terms of its share of the national vote on party lists, Jobbik won 20.54 percent, up from 15.86 percent of all votes four years ago.

Its showing was the strongest of any far-right party in the EU in the past few years, according to Cas Mudde, assistant professor at the School for Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia in the United States.

He said the previous strongest result for a far-right group was the 20.5 percent won by Austria's Freedom Party last year.

Jobbik has pledged to create jobs, be tough on crime, renegotiate state debt and hold a referendum on EU membership. While it denies being racist, prominent party members have denied the Holocaust, celebrated fascist leader Miklos Horthy, and called for the compulsory registration and detention of Hungary's Jews and Roma.

Reuters