VIENNA: Austrians voted on Sunday in a general election that could see the far right narrowly beat the conservatives for a historic win in the Alpine EU nation.
The Freedom Party (FPOe), which has topped opinion polls at 27 percent, has been in government several times, but it has never won a national vote. Even if it wins, however, it is uncertain whether it would be able to form a government.
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.
The ruling conservative People’s Party (OeVP) has been polling at 25 percent, but its leader Chancellor Karl Nehammer has managed to narrow the gap in recent weeks on a promise to bring “stability instead of chaos”.
“Problems can be solved much better with confidence than with fear,” Nehammer said after casting his vote in Vienna.
– ‘Stirs up fears’ –
Polling booths opened at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) and the last ones are due to close at 5:00 pm. Projections based on postal voting and vote counts from stations that close earlier should be announced shortly after that.
More than 6.3 million people of Austria’s nine million inhabitants are eligible to vote.
“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.
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 the FPOe’s final campaign event in front of Vienna’s main cathedral on Friday, Kickl was cheered on by his many supporters.
Among the crowd, 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”.
In his speech, Kickl slammed 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, now stand at eight percent in opinion polls, or almost half that which they received in 2019.
– 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 polling at just above 20 percent, and a third party, probably the liberal NEOS.
If the OeVP — which has been part of every government since 1987 — wins the most seats or performs almost as strongly as the FPOe, analysts see a possibility of a coalition with the far right as a junior partner.
“Austrian political memory is very short. I expect that it will come to a OeVP-FPOe coalition, which is worrisome,” health consultant Bernd Lunglmayr, told AFP in Vienna before voting.
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.