Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has surpassed Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) in the general election for the first time in the country’s history, according to Institut Foresight projections.
Legislative elections took place across the country on 29 September to elect the lower house of parliament, with polls opening at 8 am and set to close twelve hours later. The latest projections, largely in line with pre-election predictions, show a win for the party and its leader, Herbert Kickl, with 29.1% of the vote, Institut Foresight found.
“It’s a historic vote. For the first time, the Freedom Party is in first place,” Reinhard Heinisch, Professor of Comparative Austrian Politics at the University of Salzburg, said.
Although the party has joined several coalitions in the past as a junior partner, it has never come first in a general election or had a chancellor.
In the European Elections held in June, the FPÖ emerged as the leading party, securing 25.4% of the vote, narrowly surpassing the ÖVP (EPP), which finished at 24.52%.
Meanwhile, according to the poll, Nehammer’s centre-right ÖVP came in second, with 26.3%, a sharp decline of 11.2 percentage points compared to the 2019 election.
If the projections are correct, the FPÖ will not obtain the majority required to govern alone and must now form a coalition with at least one other party to achieve the necessary support.
Nehammer has previously ruled out a coalition with Kickl but has not entirely dismissed the possibility of collaborating with the FPÖ as a party, provided Kickl is excluded from any potential partnership.
“I think the conservatives are discussing ways of getting out of their self-inflicted trap, of having ruled out a coalition with the with the Freedom Party,” Heinisch added.
The Greens, the ÖVP’s coalition partner, recorded their worst result since 2017, seeing their support halved and finishing as the fifth-largest party behind the liberal NEOS (Renew).
The SPÖ (S&D) is projected to secure 20.6% in today’s national parliament election, marking their worst result in history and positioning them as the country’s third major political party.
[Edited by Alice Taylor-Braçe]
Source: euractiv.com
