Far-right Freedom party winning Austrian election, first results show

Preliminary results from Austria’s general election showed the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) winning the most votes for the first time in the postwar period as it rode a tide of public anger over migration and the cost of living. It was projected to beat the co-ruling centre-right People’s party (ÖVP) by three points, surpassing expectations.

Data reported on public television indicated the FPÖ, which campaigned hard on a pledge of “remigration” of undesired immigrants, had taken about 29.1% of the vote, comfortably ahead of the ÖVP of chancellor Karl Nehammer on 26.2%. The opposition Social Democratic party scored its worst ever result – about 20.4% – while the liberal NEOS drew about 8.8%. Despite devastating flooding this month from Storm Boris bringing the climate crisis to the fore, the Greens, junior partners in the government coalition, tallied just 8.6%.

The Communist party and the apolitical Beer party looked unlikely to clear the 4% hurdle to representation.

“Austrians made history tonight,” the FPÖ general secretary, Michael Schnedlitz, told public broadcaster ORF at his party’s jubilant election night celebration. “You can clearly see that change has come.”

The ÖVP tried to put a brave face on the result, which will send shockwaves through Europe. “We didn’t manage to get first place but we made up a lot of lost ground in recent weeks,” its general secretary, Christian Stocker, said. “Governing means confronting tough realities and we’ve done that in the last years.”

Profiting from a rightwing surge in many parts of Europe and taking Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as a model, the FPÖ and its polarising lead candidate Herbert Kickl capitalised on fears around migration, asylum and crime heightened by the August cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna over an alleged Islamist terror plot. Mounting inflation, tepid economic growth and lingering resentment over strict government measures during Covid dovetailed into a 13-point leap in support for the FPÖ since the last election in 2019.

Because it failed to win an absolute majority, the FPÖ will need a partner to govern. Unlike the other centrist parties, the ÖVP has not ruled out cooperating with the far right in the next government, as it has twice in the past in taboo-breaking alliances at the national level. Nehammer, however, has said that Kickl, a former hardline interior minister, as chancellor would be a non-starter, setting up a potential showdown in which the FPÖ would have to either jettison Kickl or take a back seat in government to win the ÖVP’s support.

Kickl, a bespectacled marathon runner, was a protege of Jörg Haider. The former firebrand FPÖ leader and Carinthia state premier, who died in 2008 in a drink-driving crash, transformed the party founded by ex-Nazi functionaries and SS officers into the nationalist, anti-Islam outfit it is today.

Migrant groups have expressed fear for the future in Austria, which critics say has failed to fully own up to its Nazi past. Rabbi Jacob Frenkel of Vienna’s Jewish Council called the election a “moment of truth”.

At his final rally in central Vienna on Friday, Kickl drew cheers from the crowd railing against anti-Russia EU sanctions, “the snobs, headteachers and know-it-alls”, climate activists and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualisation of our children”. He hailed a proposed constitutional amendment declaring the existence of only two genders. But the biggest applause line remained his call for “remigration”, or forced deportation of people “who think they don’t have to play by the rules” of Austrian society.

Nehammer actively sought during the campaign to co-opt the FPÖ’s hardline stance on immigration, which the far right hopes to bring to bear at the EU level using Austria’s outsized influence in Brussels due to its geographical prominence and strong alliances.

“The government has drastically reduced asylum applications,” the chancellor said on Thursday. “But we need more: asylum procedures in third countries before asylum seekers come through several European countries. And more: complete access to social welfare only after five years of residency in Austria.”

It was a remarkable comeback for the FPÖ, humiliated five years ago after the so-called Ibiza scandal in which Austria’s then deputy chancellor and party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was caught on video at a Spanish luxury resort discussing a potential bribe from a woman purporting to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

The disgraced Strache and his parliamentary leader, Johann Gudenus, who had initiated the meeting, were forced to resign, triggering snap elections in which the ÖVP, then led by “wunderkind” chancellor Sebastian Kurz, triumphed. Two years later Kurz quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

The last term has been marked by a stunning reversal for the government, an ÖVP coalition with the Greens, even by the baroque standards of politics in this Alpine country of 9 million. The conservatives shed 11 points in that time, with the FPÖ leading in the polls since late 2022 and coming first in European parliament elections in June.

Coalition negotiations are expected to take several weeks before a new government is in place. Regardless of the outcome, the ÖVP seems poised to hold on to power, either in an alliance with the far right or an unwieldy, unprecedented three-way coalition with smaller centrist parties, similar to Germany’s unpopular government.