The right-wing extremist Austrian party is on the verge of its first national election victory

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could win a national election for the first time on Sunday, capitalizing on voters’ fears about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other worries following recent gains by the far right elsewhere in Europe.

Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and long-time election campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor. He has used the term “Volkskanzler” or “People’s Chancellor,” which the Nazis used to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

But in order to become Austria’s new head of state, he needed a coalition partner who had a majority in the lower house of parliament.

And victory is not certain, with recent polls pointing to a close race. They put support for the Freedom Party at 27 percent, Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party at 25 percent and the center-left Social Democrats at 21 percent.

More than 6.3 million people aged 16 and over are eligible to vote for the new parliament in Austria, which pursues a policy of military neutrality.

Kickl has managed a turnaround since the last Austrian parliamentary election in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party, whose first leader was Anton Reinthaller, a former SS officer, narrowly won a nationwide vote for the first time in the European elections, also leading to gains for other European far-right parties.

In 2019, her approval rating fell to 16.2 percent after a scandal brought down a government in which she was the junior coalition partner. Then-Vice Chancellor and FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned after a secretly recorded video was released in which he appeared to offer favors to an alleged Russian investor.

The far right has capitalized on voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic. It could also build on fears about migration.

In its election manifesto, the Freedom Party calls for the “return of uninvited foreigners” and the creation of a “more homogeneous” nation through strict border controls and the suspension of the right to asylum through an “emergency law”.

Gernot Bauer, a journalist with the Austrian magazine Profil who recently co-published an investigative biography of the far-right leader, said that the Freedom Party has moved “even further to the right” under Kickl’s leadership, as Kickl refuses to explicitly distance himself from the party Identitarian Movement, a Europe-wide nationalist and right-wing extremist group.

Bauer describes Kickl’s rhetoric as “aggressive” and says some of his formulations are deliberately provocative.

The Freedom Party is also calling for an end to sanctions against Russia, is sharply critical of Western military aid to Ukraine and wants to withdraw from the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany.

The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many Austrian governments after World War II, has positioned himself as the exact opposite of Kickl. Andreas Babler has ruled out a government with the extreme right and described Kickl as “a threat to democracy”.

While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, has declined since 2019.

During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has pursued a tough course on immigration policy in recent years, as “the strong center” that would guarantee stability in numerous crises.

But it is precisely these crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting rising energy prices, that have cost the conservatives support, said Peter Filzmaier, one of Austria’s leading political scientists.

Under her leadership, Austria recorded high inflation over the last 12 months, averaging 4.2%, above the EU average.

The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 when it became the first European country to introduce compulsory coronavirus vaccinations, but this was abolished a few months later without ever being put into effect. And Nehammer is the third chancellor since the last election and will take office in 2021 after his predecessor Sebastian Kurz – the 2019 winner – left politics due to a corruption investigation.

But the recent flooding caused by Storm Boris that hit Austria and other Central European countries brought the issue of the environment back into the election debate and helped Nehammer narrow the gap slightly with the Freedom Party by presenting himself as a “crisis manager,” Filzmaier said .

Nehammer said in a video on Thursday: “It’s about whether we continue on this proven path of stability together or leave the country to the radicals who make a lot of promises and don’t keep them.”

The People’s Party is the extreme right’s only route into government.

Nehammer has repeatedly ruled out joining a government led by Kickl, calling it a “security risk” for the country. However, he has not ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party, which would mean Kickl giving up a government position.

The likelihood that Kickl would agree to such a deal if he wins the election is very low, said Filzmaier.

But if the People’s Party comes through first, there could be a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, said Filzmaier. The most likely alternative would be a three-way alliance between the People’s Party, the Social Democrats and most likely the liberal Neos.

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Associated Press video journalist Philipp Jenne contributed to this report.