Exit polls indicate Austria's far-right Freedom Party has won national election

Austria's far-right Freedom Party finished first in the general election on Sunday, according to early projections.

The projection for ORF public television, based on partial counting, put support for the Freedom Party at 29.1% in the parliamentary election and Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party at 26.2%.

The centre-left Social Democrats were in third place with 20.4%.

More than 6.3 million people aged 16 and over were eligible to vote for the new parliament in Austria, a European Union member that has a policy of military neutrality.

Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor.

He has used the term “Volkskanzler,” or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Kickl has rejected the comparison.

But to become Austria’s new leader, he would need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.

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The far-right has tapped into voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic. It has also been able to build on worries about migration.

In its election program, the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an “emergency law.”

The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite of Kickl.

Andreas Babler has ruled out governing with the far-right and labelled Kickl “a threat to democracy.”

While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, has declined since 2019.

During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough line on immigration in recent years, as “the strong centre” that will guarantee stability amid multiple crises.

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