Austria’s far-right Freedom Party was headed for its first win in a national parliamentary election on Sunday, finishing ahead of the governing conservatives after tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns, a projection showed. But its chances of governing were unclear.
A projection for ORF public television, based on counting of more than half the votes, put support for the Freedom Party at 29.2 per cent and Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party at 26.3 per cent. The centre-left Social Democrats were in third place with 20.5 per cent.
Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and long-time campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor on the back of the first far-right national election win in post-World War 2 Austria.
“Voters put their foot down today,” said on Sunday, reading the projected win for his party as a “clear statement that things cannot go on like this in this country”.
