Hard-Right on course for victory in Austrian election, exit poll shows

FPO-led government would be a headache for EU leaders as they wrestle with growing populism

The hard-Right Freedom Party (FPO) was on course to win elections in Austria on Sunday night, putting it within reach of leading its first ever government.
An exit poll released on Sunday evening said that Herbert Kickl’s anti-immigrant FPO would take first place with 29 per cent of the vote.
The centre-Right Austrian People’s Party (OVP), led by chancellor Karl Nehammer, was predicted to come in second with 26 per cent.
The poll predicted an unprecedented win for Mr Kickl’s FPO, which could install him as the first hard-Right chancellor in Austria’s post-war history if he manages to build a coalition.
An FPO-led government would cause a major headache for other EU leaders as they wrestle with growing populism across the bloc.
Earlier this month, the far-right Alternative for Germany won its first state elections in Thuringia.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party entered government in May, six months after coming first in parliamentary elections.
Mr Wilders hailed the FPÖ victory as evidence of a far-right surge across the continent.
“The Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, France, Spain, Czech Republic and today Austria! We are winning! Times are changing!” he wrote on X.
And although Marine Le Pen’s National Rally narrowly lost a snap election in France in July, it gained enough seats to act as kingmaker in the resulting hung parliament.
Meanwhile, Viktor Orban, the president of Hungary, has become a vocal opponent of military support for Ukraine.
The FPO will face an uphill struggle to form a coalition, however, as Austria’s other parties consider Mr Kickl too toxic for high office.
He has been accused of flirting with fascism, including with a 2018 remark that the authorities should “concentrate asylum seekers in one place” in what was widely viewed as an allusion to Nazi death camps.
The hard-Right party could try and lead a coalition with Mr Nehammer’s OVP, which came second. Mr Nehammer has already ruled this out unless Mr Kickl does not serve as chancellor.
“Austrians have made history tonight… you can clearly see that change has come,” Michael Schnedlitz, the FPO general secretary, said on Austrian TV after the exit poll was released.
During the campaign, the FPO – a party with Nazi roots founded in 1956 by a former SS officer – pledged to turn the country into “Fortress Austria” and introduce a controversial “remigration” policy.
Remigration would involve deporting asylum seekers, particularly criminals, and blocking family reunification for migrants already based in Austria.
FPO party chiefs have also vowed to significantly tighten Austrian land border security, scrap Austrian involvement in the EU Sky Shield air-defence scheme, and remain strictly neutral on foreign conflicts.
The party is friendly towards Russia and has described EU leaders’ close support for Ukraine as “madness”.
In 2018, the party’s nominee for the post of foreign minister danced a waltz with Vladimir Putin at her wedding.
Mr Kickl also agitated against lockdown rules during the pandemic, refusing to wear a face mask in parliament. The party has pledged to enshrine in Austria’s constitution that there are only two genders.
The FPO and OVP parties have previously joined forces in short-lived coalitions where the FPO was the junior partner.
Their first coalition collapsed in 2002 amid FPO infighting, while the second coalition imploded in the wake of the 2019 Ibiza affair.
In that scandal, the FPO’s Heinz-Christian Strache, then leader and vice-chancellor, resigned after he was filmed meeting a woman who was posing as the niece of a Russian media buyer, to discuss swapping government contracts for favourable coverage.
The OVP’s Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor at the time, then lost a no-confidence vote in parliament that brought down the coalition.
“The FPO will support anti-immigration policies, but the fact that it will likely govern in coalition will prevent a radicalisation of policy,” said Safa Sharif, a political analyst from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
In Vienna, supporters of Mr Kickl’s FPO said it was the only option for voters who wanted drastic action on slowing down the rate of migration and keeping Austria neutral.
“My opinion is it’s the only serious party,” said Nordika, 49. “I’ve voted for them before as well, because I think that closing the borders will work, it is the best solution for European security.”
Also running this year was the anti-establishment Beer Party, which was initially founded as a joke in 2015 by Dominik Wlazny, a rock musician and medical doctor.
Since the Ibiza scandal, the party has vowed to clean up corruption in politics, with the candidates campaigning in leather jackets and hosting beer-hall sessions for potential voters.
“[Our voters] are frustrated with how it is now, it cannot be like this in the future,” said Viktoria Mullner, a Beer Party candidate in Vienna. “Most of them saw our spirit on what we want to do, what we want to achieve, our core values of doing politics that are clean and for the people. It’s not just because the FPO [is rising in the polls].”