A victory for Herbert Gieglin’s party would make Austria the latest EU country to record far-right support.
Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO) is forecast to top the ruling conservatives in the country’s general election, with support for hard-right parties fueled by concerns over immigration levels in Europe increasing.
A poll by the polling division for broadcaster ORF on Sunday showed Herbert Gieglin’s FPO with 29.1 percent of the vote, with chancellor Karl Neuhammer’s Austrian People’s Party (OVP) in second place with 26.2 percent.
The centre-left Social Democrats (SDP) were predicted to come third with 20.4 percent.
A separate program by pollster Arge Wahlen put the FPO first, winning by about four percentage points, a bigger margin than the final poll.
Party workers and supporters at an FPO event in the capital Vienna greeted the predictions with glee.
Kickl, a former interior minister who has led the FPO since 2021, is seeking to become Austria’s new chancellor on the back of the country’s first far-right national election victory since World War II.
However, the 55-year-old needs a coalition partner to form a majority in the lower house of parliament – and rivals have said they will not work with him.
The FPO is ready to hold talks with all parties on forming a government, Gicl told national broadcaster ORF after the projections were published.
Talking to other party leaders, Gikl said that other parties should reconsider their refusal to form an alliance with him.
The OVP, which supports tougher immigration rules and tax cuts like the FPO, is the only party open to forming a coalition with the far-right – but without the giggle.
In his first comments since the election, Nehhammer said he stood by his refusal to form a government that included the FPO leader.
Concerns about the economy and immigration into the country dominated the campaign period near the polls and largely dispersed the OVP’s vote.
Nazi roots
Al Jazeera’s Ida Duratović, reporting from Vienna, said both the OVP and the SDP had previously been in power with the FPO but did not want to do it again this time.
He said many in Austria believed the FPO was controversial because of its Nazi origins.
“Their founder was an SS officer and a Nazi minister,” he said, adding that some in Austria do not believe the party has completely divorced itself from its Nazi roots.
“Herbert Kickle calls himself the ‘people’s chancellor,’ which is a term Adolf Hitler used to describe himself,” Duratovic added.
An FPO victory would make Austria the latest EU country to record far-right support after gains in countries including the Netherlands, France and Germany.
The Eurosceptic party – which criticizes Islam, has close ties to Russia and promises tougher rules for asylum seekers – won a national referendum for the first time when it defeated the OVP by less than one percentage point in European elections in June.
President Alexander van der Bellen, who oversees the formation of governments, has reservations about the FPO because of its criticism of the EU and its failure to condemn Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
The party opposes EU sanctions on Moscow, citing Austria’s neutrality.
The president hinted that the gig could be overturned, saying the constitution does not require the party in first place to form a government, even though it has long been a convention.
