Austrians will go to the polls on September 29 and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) appears set to win the vote, according to the latest data.
As it stands, the FPÖ sits on 27 points, ahead of the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) on 23 percent and the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) on 21 points.
Although its leading, Herbert Kickl’s party is highly unlikely to claim the overall majority it would need to form a government alone. As such, if it has designs on governing it will need to form a coalition.
However, as Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) recently found out in Tharingia and Saxony, claiming victory at the ballot box is one thing, cajoling opposition parties into bed is a different task altogether.
That said Austria and Germany, although sharing a language, are not politically identical.
Unlike the AfD, the FPÖ, whose first leader was an SS officer and Nazi agricultural minister, has been in power before.
Most recently it was a junior partner in a government led by the ÖVP from 2017 to 2019, before a scandal involving the then-Vice-Chancellor of Austria and FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache forced snap elections. The FPÖ performed poorly at that poll and were booted from office.
However, commentators note that the scandal, known as the Ibiza Affair, now appears a distant memory. And with immigration still very high on the agenda, the FPÖ is once more in the ascendancy.
According to Austrian political scientist Farid Hafez, the FPÖ has been a thought-leader for the far-right throughout Europe.
Earlier this year, he told Express.co.uk: “The FPÖ has always been leading in inspiring other far-right parties. ‘Austria First’ was a slogan in the early 1990s, Haider led the FPÖ as the first far-right party to form a government in an EU country.
“And it is a typical far-right party comparable to others like the Sweden Democrats, the French National Rally or the Brothers of Italy when it comes to its post-Fascist or post-Nazism legacy.
“It has also rebranded itself as a protector of Jews to mobilise against the new internal enemy, Muslims.
“The FPÖ was one of the first parties to introduce anti-Muslim policy claims successfully on a European level, back in 2008, when it started an alliance called Cities Against Islamisation with the Vlaams Belang and several German far-right parties.”