Austria votes in general election as far right eyes victory

Voters in Austria are casting their ballot in a general election that could see the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) secure a victory amid voter concerns over the economy and immigration.

Polling booths opened on Sunday at 7am (05:00 GMT) and were due to close at 7pm (17:00 GMT).

More than 6.3 million people aged 16 and above are eligible to vote for the new parliament, with analysts predicting the far right to narrowly beat the governing conservatives. The FPO has been outpolling the governing centre-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) for the past year, partly driven by opposition to immigration.

The FPO, which topped several pre-election opinion polls, has been in government several times but has never won a national vote. Should they win though, it is still uncertain whether it would be able to form a government.

Since sharp-tongued Herbert Kickl took over the corruption-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.

Cementing the FPO’s image as an anti-establishment party, Kickl, 55, has campaigned on slogans such as “Courageously try something new”. The party now stands at 27 percent of support in opinion polls.

The OVP has been lagging. But its leader, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, 51, has managed to narrow the gap in recent weeks.

Promising “stability instead of chaos”, the OVP is at 25 percent support in the latest polls.

‘A decisive election’

Projections based on postal voting and vote count from stations that close earlier should be announced shortly after that.

“It is a decisive election,” Rachel Schwarzboeck, 74, an Austrian retiree with Jewish and Polish roots, told AFP, adding that she would not vote for the FPO – a party formed by former Nazis.

“I don’t want a Nazi regime in power in Austria,” she said.

Long a political force in Austria, the FPO’s first government involvement in 2000 under the conservatives 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 coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“This time it will be different, this time, we’re going to come out on top in this election. This time, we will succeed,” Kickl told cheering supporters in front of Vienna’s main cathedral on Friday.

In his speech, he once again slammed European Union 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.

The conservative OVP’s support has plunged from more than 37 percent in the last national election in 2019.

Their junior coalition partner, the Greens, now stands at 8 percent in opinion polls, almost half of which they received in 2019.