Far Right Wins Austrian Vote but May Fall Short of Forming a Government

The Freedom Party got nearly 30 percent of the national vote, but mainstream parties have vowed to join in a coalition government without the party’s pugilistic leader, Herbert Kickl.

Austrian voters handed the Freedom Party of Austria a solid win in national elections on Sunday, rebuking establishment parties and notching another victory for a xenophobic party in Europe as the tide of far-right populism rises on the continent.

But despite the nearly 30 percent who voted for the far-right Freedom Party and its pugilistic leader, Herbert Kickl, the victory in national parliamentary elections could turn out to be merely symbolic, as mainstream parties have promised to form a coalition government without him.

Still, on Sunday Mr. Kickl, who campaigned on making Austria a “fortress of freedom,” insisted he has a clear mandate to form a government and announced that he would be open to conversations about possible coalitions with all other parties in Parliament. “Our hand is reached out to everybody,” he said on Sunday evening.

However, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, the head of the conservative People’s Party, quickly made clear that he would stand by his campaign promise not to build a government with Mr. Kickl, dashing any realistic hopes that the far-right party could come to power.

“It is the best result in the history of the Freedom Party and the first time it gets first place in a national council election,” said Peter Filzmaier, a political analyst, in a text exchange, referring to the Austrian Parliament. “However, without government participation, this is merely of great symbolic value.”

The Austrian election resembled a series of state elections this month in Eastern Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany won significantly in state house contests, only to be locked out of the government by other mainstream parties working together to exclude the party, which they say is a danger to democracy.

Sunday’s election is one of several successes for national far-right parties in Europe that have scored remarkable wins as voters have forsaken mainstream parties amid concerns about irregular migration, the war in Ukraine and weakening economies.

In June, France’s far-right National Rally party scored more than 30 percent of the votes and came in first in European Union parliamentary elections, in a vote that prompted President Emmanuel Macron of France to call for a snap national vote. Last November, the Netherlands gave Geert Wilders’s far-right anti-Islam Party for Freedom a significant victory at ballot boxes, leading to a new government four months later.

In Austria Mr. Kickl campaigned on a strong anti-immigrant platform, denigrating migrants in Austria as criminals and welfare sponges. He has called for a temporary halt in accepting new asylum seekers and a law that would ban asylum seekers from becoming Austrian citizens. The Freedom Party, which was founded in the 1950s by former members of the SS, was part of the government until 2019. Mr. Kickl was interior minister, responsible for borders and intelligence services.

President Alexander Van der Bellen of Austria has said that he will not swear in a government under Mr. Kickl. The coming days and weeks will show whether Mr. Van der Bellen will ask Chancellor Nehammer to start coalition negotiations.

According to official preliminary tallies, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria got 29.2 percent of the vote and the conservative People’s Party 26.5 percent. The Social Democrats got 21.1 percent, their lowest ever in a federal election, while the liberal NEOS got 9 percent and the Greens, which are part of the current government, received 8 percent of the vote.

On Sunday, Mr. Nehammer declined to speculate about coalition parties, but given the new distribution of seats, his party could form a coalition with the Social Democrats and possibly a third partner, like the liberal NEOS.

The governing People’s Party lost 11 percentage points compared with the last election in 2019, when the chancellor at the time, Sebastian Kurz, won convincingly. Since then the party has weathered a scandal over influence-buying and corruption that led to Mr. Kurz’s stepping down and leaving politics.

“This election result perfectly embodies the paradox of Austrian politics: an incredible amount is shifting, but at the same time nothing changes,” said Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, a professor of Austrian politics at the University of Vienna, whose research focuses on political parties.

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