Austrians Vote with Far Right in Sight of Historic Win

Austrians headed to the polls on Sunday in a general election that could see the far right narrowly beat the conservatives for a historic win in the Alpine EU nation.

The Freedom Party (FPOe), which topped opinion polls, has been in government several times but has never won a national vote, though even if it wins, it is uncertain whether it would be able to form a government.

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

The FPOe now stands at 27 percent of support in opinion polls.

"Austrian political memory is very short. I expect that it will come to a coalition between the conservatives and the far right, which is worrisome," health consultant Bernd Lunglmayr, told AFP in Vienna.

The ruling conservative People's Party (OeVP) has been lagging behind, but its leader, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, 51, has managed to narrow the gap in recent weeks.

Promising "stability instead of chaos", the OeVP is at about 25 percent support in the latest polls.

"Problems can be solved much better with confidence than with fear," Nehammer said after casting his vote in Vienna, calling on people to vote to "determine our future direction".

- 'Stirs up fears' -

Polling booths opened at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) and the last ones are due to close at 5:00 pm. Projections based on postal voting and vote counts from stations that close earlier should be announced shortly after that.

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More than 6.3 million people of Austria's nine million inhabitants are eligible to vote.

"The FPOe mainly stirs up fears and never has anything constructive to contribute," researcher Theres Friesacher, 29, told AFP after voting in Vienna, citing corruption scandals that have frequently engulfed the party.

Long a political force in Austria, the FPOe'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 defense after a series of crises, including the Covid 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 a throng of cheering supporters in front of Vienna's main cathedral on Friday.

In his speech, he once again slammed EU 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.

During the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, Austria -- alongside Germany and Sweden -- was one of the preferred destinations for refugees, and has been ever since.

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

Their junior coalition partner, the Greens, now stand at eight percent in opinion polls, or almost half that which they received in 2019.

- No 'people's chancellor' -

But analysts widely predict even if the FPOe wins the most seats, it will not have enough seats or partners to form a government.

Nehammer has reiterated his refusal to work under Kickl, who has called himself the future "Volkskanzler", the people's chancellor, as Adolf Hitler was termed in the 1930s.

Thwarting a Kickl chancellorship could be an unprecedented three-party coalition headed by the OeVP with the Social Democrats, who are polling at just above 20 percent, and a third party, probably the liberal NEOS.

If the OeVP -- which has been part of every government since 1987 -- wins the most seats or performs almost as strongly as the FPOe, analysts see a possibility of a coalition with the far right as a junior partner.

The two parties' views converge "on many subjects", and "creative solutions" could be found to deal with Kickl, Andreas Eisl, researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute, told AFP.

Both past OeVP-FPOe governments were short lived.

The last one, headed by charismatic then-OeVP leader Sebastian Kurz, collapsed over a spectacular FPOe corruption scandal in 2019, after just a year and a half in power.