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Austria’s far-right Freedom party was on course to win a historic electoral victory on Sunday, in a result that will consolidate pro-Russian, anti-establishment forces in central Europe.
The FPÖ was projected to win 29.1 per cent of ballots cast, according to the first official estimate of the parliamentary vote, bolstering the claim of its firebrand leader Herbert Kickl to become Austria’s next chancellor. The projection — which includes exit polls and partial results — is usually a highly reliable predictor of the outcome.
The FPÖ — one of Europe’s longest-standing parties of the populist right, which has embraced increasingly hardline and extremist policies on immigration and the war in Ukraine in recent years under Kickl — has never come first in a national election before.
The breakthrough comes as the latest in a series of victories for Europe’s far right — most notably in France and the Netherlands — and underscores the extent to which the continent’s political centre is struggling to hold ground amid an interlinking series of deep social and economic challenges.
“The voter has spoken. Change is wanted in our country,” FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said, while acknowledging that the final results were not in yet.
The preliminary data points to an even better final outcome than expected, with many having assumed that undecided voters would ultimately turn away from the party at the ballot box, preferring to support the more moderate conservative People’s party (ÖVP), which governs in coalition with the Greens.
Instead, the ÖVP — which has dominated the Austrian political scene for the last 70 years — was projected to win just 26.2 per cent. The Social Democrats were on track to secure just 20.4 per cent, their worst-ever result.
A fraught period of negotiations to form a new coalition government will now follow.
The FPÖ’s strong performance may paradoxically reduce its chances of gaining power, with the ÖVP potentially unwilling to consider a role as the junior partner in a government.
Instead they may look to try to form a grand coalition with the Social Democrats and liberal Neos — an otherwise unpalatable bargain owing to yawning policy differences that may now prove less politically toxic for them than making a deal with a triumphant FPÖ.
While the ÖVP and FPÖ have more policy positions in common, Kickl is seen by many in the ÖVP as an impossible figure to work with, and his likely demand to be made chancellor is a red line the ÖVP may not be willing to cross.
For Kickl anything less would meanwhile be a capitulation, given the result.
Kickl previously served as interior minister in a coalition government led by the ÖVP under chancellor Sebastian Kurz in 2017-19. That alliance collapsed after the FPÖ’s leadership was filmed in a sting operation in a luxury villa in Ibiza soliciting what they thought was Russian political support.
Although Kickl was not involved in that scandal, he was forced out of the government and a deep mistrust between him and the ÖVP leadership has festered ever since.
Many in the ÖVP are also uncomfortable with the more radical course Kickl has taken the FPÖ on since he became leader in 2021.
He has shown himself ready to break taboos over the country’s Nazi past as part of his campaign strategy and has helped to bring figures considered even by past FPÖ leaders as too extreme — such as those from the Austrian identitarian movement, which holds radical views on race and culture — back into the party fold.
Over a summer of campaigning, Kickl has repeatedly styled himself as the “Volkskanzler” — people’s chancellor — a phrase with a long political history but most commonly associated with Adolf Hitler.
Kickl and his supporters would reject any notion that he is a Nazi. But people familiar with his campaign style say that — borrowing from the playbook of the late FPÖ leader Jörg Haider — he is willing to goad opponents even on such historically sensitive topics, as a way to portray them as censorious and oversensitive.
As well as complicating potential relations with the ÖVP, such tactics make Kickl an even more unpalatable figure for Austria’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, who will have to appoint the next government.
Although his office serves a largely ceremonial role in the day-to-day running of Austrian governmental affairs, he appoints each member of the cabinet individually. It is only by tradition that the largest party nominates a chancellor and Van der Bellen has made no secret of his distaste for Kickl, suggesting in the past he could refuse to appoint him minister.
He has precedent in the matter too. In 2017, Van der Bellen refused to allow Johann Gudenus, an FPÖ politician with close ties to Russia, to become a member of the cabinet.
“The formation of a grand coalition [between the ÖVP and Social Democrats] will be pushed hard by Van der Bellen,” said Marcus How, head of research at VE Insight, a Vienna-based political risk consultancy.
“Yet that would also be a gamble,” he said, as it would give the FPÖ even more arguments to “rail against” the political establishment uniting against them.
