I vote for Austria, the far right is ahead in the polls
The Austrians are voting today in the legislative elections, with which they will re-elect 183 deputies for another five years. According to the latest polls, the Freedom Party (FPOE), far rightis given at 26-27% of the votes in front of the People’s Party (OVP)which is given as around 25%. For some time now, and during the electoral campaign, the Freedom Party has focused above all on the migration issue, which is still strong today.
Added to this was the issue of Covid and the measures that have been highly contested in the country, the criticism of the sanctions against Russia and regarding climate policies. A polarization strategy that has earned the ultra-right a part of that electorate that is now dissatisfied with traditional parties but does not intend to abstain. The Austrian vote is important for the role that Austria, despite its modest size of only 9 million people, plays in Europe when it comes to issues of trade and migration.
The FPOE’s harsh stance towards Brussels – its leadership flirts with the idea of ”Oexit”, an Austrian-style Brexit – would surely lead to increased tensions between the EU and Vienna. Furthermore, an FPOE victory could produce a pro-Russian populist bloc in Central Europe, with Hungary and Slovakia.
The leader of the FPOE, Herbert Kickl, is a former philosophy student who became an ideologue of the far right. The party has vowed to close Austria’s borders and “repatriate” anyone it considers foreigners. Thanks to positions like that, he has been leading national polls since the fall of 2022.
However, the prospect of FPOE expressing a government in Vienna does not appear imminent. The other main parties have in fact ruled out the possibility of creating a coalition with the far-right party. The center-right OVP party, which in the 2000s collaborated with Jeorg Haider’s party, could be the tipping point. In the latest regional elections, this party took a tough position against the far-right party, but even the hypothesis of a government with the Social Democrats is not very likely.
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