The Freedom Party was headed for the first far-right win in a national parliamentary election in post-World War II Austria on Sunday, finishing ahead of the governing conservatives after tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other issues, a projection showed. But its chances of governing were unclear.
A projection for ORF public television, based on counting of over 90% of the votes, put support for the Freedom Party at 28.9% and Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party at 26.3%. The center-left Social Democrats were in third place with 21%. The outgoing government — a coalition of Nehammer’s party and the environmentalist Greens — lost its majority in the lower house of parliament.
The far right has benefited from frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also built on worries about migration.
In its election program, titled “Fortress Austria,” the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an emergency law.
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