The Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) led by Herbert Kickl emerged as the largest party in Sunday’s general election with 29.5% of the vote, placing it comfortably ahead of the centre right Austrian Peoples Party (OVP) which took the main hit in terms of votes.
The percentage vote for the OVP fell by almost 11% % while the FPO was up by over 13%.
The FPO almost doubled its number of seats winning 58 in all. 97 seats are needed to form a ruling majority and while the tradition in Austria has always been that the largest party gets to form a coalition both the OVP and the Socialist Party – which had its worst ever election and finished third – have made it clear that they will not go into government with Kickl’s party.
The outgoing coalition had been made up of the OVP and the Greens but the latter had a disastrous election; losing almost 6% of its vote and almost half of its seats to finish on 8% and 15 seats – the coalition total number of seats falling from 97 to 67.
The President of Austria Alexander Van Der Bellen, a member of the Green Party, has already implied that he might ignore the convention of inviting the largest party to form a government and go directly to OVP leader, outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who in an interview reiterated his party’s opposition to a coalition but implied that he might be willing to cooperate with them.
The People’s Party had in any event been prepared to accept the FPO as coalition partner when the two formed a government in 2017 that collapsed in 2019 over a corruption scandal. The 2019 election saw the FPO lose 20 seats which led to the replacement of former leader Hofer by Kickl.
The FPO was also part of a coalition with the OVP after the 1999 general election in which the FPO won 27% of the vote but allowed the smaller OVP to elect the Chancellor in a coalition that ousted the Socialist. Yesterday’s result is not as dramatic as some commentators are making out, nor would a coalition between the Socialists and the OVP be unprecedented should the President take that option.
The Freedom Party is insisting that it has first call on forming a government with Kickl as Chancellor and post-election rallies heard promises that they would turn the electoral result into a path to power. Kickl is regarded as a more radical figure than Hofer and has taken positions on the war in Ukraine and EU power over member states similar to that of Hungary. That will make it more difficult to get the OVP to vote for him as Chancellor.
The FPO stood on a platform of demanding a complete end to asylum and promising to set about deporting large numbers of people already in the country. That proved particularly persuasive in the wake of several horrific crimes and the planned terrorist attack on the Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in August.