15 October 2024

LSE's Heinisch: The far right won Austria’s election, but may end up in opposition

Austria’s parliamentary elections were a watershed. For the first time in the country’s democratic history, the populist far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) came first in a national election, beating the two parties that founded and long dominated Austria...

With 28.8% of the vote, the FPÖ achieved its best result in a parliamentary election, winning 64 seats in the 183-member parliament. The ÖVP had gained momentum in the polls in the weeks leading up to the election, but failed to catch up with 26.3%. The SPÖ, internally torn by the ever-present pressures of socio-economic and socio-cultural divisions among its supporters and functionaries, never got beyond the 21% that most polls had predicted.

Rejecting the mainstream

This was a resounding rebuke to both traditional parties. Just five years ago, the ÖVP, under its young political star Sebastian Kurz, had surged to an impressive 38.4% after moving sharply to the right, and seemed poised for solid majorities for years to come. After Kurz was forced out following an indictment and subsequent conviction for perjury, his successor as party leader and chancellor, former interior minister Karl Nehammer, struggled to overcome his dull image compared to the dashing Kurz.

His government also seemed overwhelmed by the various crises affecting the country, ranging from COVID-19, a massive spike in energy prices due to the war in Ukraine and subsequent high inflation. All three predicaments hit Austria disproportionately hard compared to other western countries, leaving the country with a recession-ridden economy and unsustainable deficits that exceeded the Maastricht criteria. Although Nehammer gained stature during the campaign, he still failed to achieve the typical political boost that incumbent chancellors usually receive.

The SPÖ fared even worse, losing votes even from its historically poor showing in 2019. As a result of this earlier setback, it had changed its leadership, repositioning the party much further to the left. The new leader, Andreas Babler, won the leadership through a grassroots campaign, but he clearly lacked the support of other senior figures and important factions in the party.

Some leading members were so alarmed by Babler’s left-wing rhetoric that, even shortly before the election, they expressed concern that he could damage the party in future coalition talks. The SPÖ’s remaining constituencies turned out to be pensioners and urban progressives who wanted to prevent a right-wing government coalition and therefore switched from the Greens to the SPÖ to make the latter large enough to form a coalition with Nehammer’s conservatives. Meanwhile, the bulk of blue-collar voters had long shifted to the Freedom Party.

Kickl’s triumph

The clear winner of the election was Herbert Kickl, the leader of the Freedom Party. His mastery of social media campaigning went beyond all other parties in Austria, with the party’s updates regularly reaching more than a million followers in a country of nine million. This ensured the FPÖ achieved the result that had been predicted in the polls for more than a year. Kickl, arguably Austria’s best communicator among top politicians, had emerged from the shadow of the eternal strategist in the background. He managed to establish himself as the undisputed party leader after the party’s implosion in 2019 following the infamous Ibiza video...

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