Austria Far Right Set For Historic Win In Vote As Freedom Party Leads In Exit Polls

Austria’s far right was ahead of the ruling conservatives in Sunday’s national vote, according to projections published by public broadcaster ORF, setting them up for a historic win in the Alpine EU nation.

The Freedom Party (FPOe) has been in government several times but has never won a national vote. Even if it wins, however, it is uncertain whether it would be able to form a government.

The FPOe stood at 29.1 percent of votes, against 26.2 percent for the conservative People’s Party (OeVP), according to projections based on postal voting and vote counts from stations that closed earlier Sunday.

Since Herbert Kickl took over the graft-tainted party in 2021, it has seen its popularity rebound on voter anger over migration, inflation and Covid restrictions, in line with far-right parties elsewhere in Europe.

“I have a good feeling about today. I believe the vibe is right and the vibe will turn into votes,” Kickl told reporters after voting in Purkersdorf just outside Vienna, pledging “five good years” for Austria.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who managed to close the gap to the FPOe in recent weeks in opinion polls, has promised “stability instead of chaos”. “Problems can be solved much better with confidence than with fear,” Nehammer said after casting his vote in Vienna.

– ‘Major exception’ –

Polling booths opened at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) and the last ones closed at 5:00 pm. More than 6.3 million of Austria’s nine million inhabitants were eligible to vote. Long a political force in Austria, the FPOe’s first government with the conservatives in 2000 set off widespread protests and sanctions from Brussels.

Since then, far-right parties have been on the rise throughout Europe, with outgoing governments largely on the defence after a series of crises, including the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At a final FPOe campaign rally on Friday, cafe manager Walter Gerhard Piranty told AFP that he was intrigued by Kickl’s “asceticism”, saying he was “a major exception” among politicians “who are generally debauched or corrupt”.

Kickl regularly slams EU sanctions against Russia, espoused the far-right concept of “remigration” that calls for expelling people of non-European ethnic backgrounds deemed to have failed to integrate, and raged against the outgoing government. During the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, Austria — alongside Germany and Sweden — was one of the preferred destinations for refugees, and has been ever since.

Meanwhile, the conservative OeVP’s support has plunged from more than 37 percent in the last national election in 2019. Their junior coalition partner, the Greens, stood at 8.7 percent, according to the projections, also falling from their 2019 results.

– No ‘people’s chancellor’ –

But analysts widely predict even if the FPOe wins the most seats, it will need partners to govern with. Nehammer has reiterated his refusal to work under Kickl, who has called himself the future “Volkskanzler”, the people’s chancellor, as Adolf Hitler was termed in the 1930s.

Thwarting a Kickl chancellorship could be an unprecedented three-party coalition headed by the OeVP with the Social Democrats, who are projected to win just above 20 percent of votes, and a third party, probably the liberal NEOS.

“The FPOe mainly stirs up fears and never has anything constructive to contribute,” researcher Theres Friesacher, 29, told AFP after voting in Vienna, citing corruption scandals that have frequently engulfed the party. Both past OeVP-FPOe governments were short-lived. The last one, headed by charismatic then-OeVP leader Sebastian Kurz, collapsed over a spectacular FPOe corruption scandal in 2019, after just a year and a half in power.