Calling Hungary "partly free" is ridiculous.
Well, as far as I understand their system, a country is automatically downgraded from "Free" to "Partly Free" as soon as the average of its "Political Rights" and "Civil Liberties" scores reaches a 3.0 out of 7, as it was the case here.
This happened because Hungary's "Civil Liberties" score was downgraded from a "2" to a "3" this year (the country's "Political Rights" had already been at "3" for the past two years now).
Reading Freedom House's country report on Hungary it seems like the downgrade in the "Civil Liberties" category specifically happened due to curtailments in the area of freedom of religion for both Christians and Muslims, as the report notes:
So, it seems the downgrade to "Partly Free" was more like a "straw that broke the camel's back" moment. According to Freedom House's assessments, Hungary had already been edging pretty closely to the "Partly Free" status in 2016 and 2017 and this is what pushed it finally over the line.
Hungary did in fact also lose a point in the "Political Pluralism and Participation" sub-section of the "Political Rights" category this year, but apparently not enough to decrease the overall PR score from "3" to "4". The reports notes in that regard:
