‘Moment of truth’ for Austria as far right senses election triumph

The wiry, bespectacled man in the down vest, looking like an amiable ski instructor, beams on stage as the crowd chants “Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!”, waving hundreds of Austrian flags. Just after sunset behind the soaring spire of Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral, Austria’s far-right leader Herbert Kickl tells voters they have the chance with Sunday’s potentially watershed national election to “take our country back”.

“Five good years,” Kickl promised the audience, with polls showing that his pro-Kremlin, anti-migration Freedom party (FPÖ) could for the first time win the most votes. “Volkskanzler!” supporters shout, using the “people’s chancellor” moniker once used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, which Kickl has also come to embrace.

Riding a far-right surge in many parts of Europe and taking Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as a model, the FPÖ and Kickl are capitalising on fears around migration, asylum and crime heightened by the August cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna over an alleged Islamist terror plot. Mounting inflation, tepid economic growth and lingering resentment over strict government measures during Covid have dovetailed into an 11-point leap in the polls for the FPÖ since the last election in 2019.

It is a remarkable comeback for a party humiliated five years ago after the so-called Ibiza scandal in which Austria’s then deputy chancellor and FPÖ leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was caught on video at a Spanish luxury resort discussing a potential bribe from a woman purporting to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

The disgraced Strache and his parliamentary leader, Johann Gudenus, who had initiated the meeting, were forced to resign, triggering snap elections in which the centre-right Austrian People’s party (ÖVP), led by “wunderkind” chancellor Sebastian Kurz, triumphed. Two years later Kurz quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

The last term has been marked by a stunning reversal for the government, an ÖVP coalition with the Greens, even by the baroque standards of politics in this Alpine country of nine million. The conservatives have shed 13 points in that time, with the FPÖ leading in the polls since late 2022 and coming first in European parliament elections in June.

Kickl said he chose the capital’s most important religious monument as a backdrop for its historical significance – as the site of a key election rally by his mentor Jörg Haider 25 years before. The former firebrand FPÖ leader and Carinthia state premier, who died in 2008 in a drink-driving crash, transformed the party founded by ex-Nazi functionaries and SS officers into the anti-migrant, anti-Islam outfit it is today.

“Just imagine what might have been if we had had Jörg Haider as chancellor,” Kickl said to cheers, as counter-protesters whistled and beat drums from behind a police cordon. “But this time you can feel it: we’re going to do it.”

Children clutched FPÖ turquoise balloons as the crowd roared when Kickl railed against anti-Russian sanctions, “the snobs, headteachers and know-it-alls”, climate activists and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualisation of our children”. He hailed a proposed constitutional amendment declaring the existence of only two genders. But the biggest applause line remained his call for “remigration”, or forced deportation of people “who think they don’t have to play by the rules” of Austrian society.

“It was a fantastic speech,” said Elisabeth Brünner, 67, a retired forestry worker. “Herr Kickl is a free spirit – people try to paint him as an extremist but that’s wrong. He’s a patriot.”

“I’ve been an FPÖ supporter from the start and Kickl learned what he knows from Herr Haider,” said butcher Martha, 58. “He wants to put Austria first above all other countries and turn things around.”

Peter, 55, clutching a small Austrian flag and wearing a Trump hat, joined in the “Herbert” chants. Asked what Kickl had in common with the former US president, he said: “A healthy understanding of the people and culture and a rejection of the great replacement,” a white nationalist conspiracy theory.

Kickl has been joined on the campaign trail by far-right allies from abroad who have sought to mimic the FPÖ’s success since Haider, including Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland co-leader Alice Weidel.

Polling shows the election on a knife-edge, with the far right in the lead at 27%, two points ahead of the ÖVP of Chancellor Karl Nehammer. The opposition Social Democrats (SPÖ) look set for third place with about 21%. Despite devastating flooding this month from Storm Boris bringing the climate crisis to the fore, the Greens are on just 8%, nearly six points off their 2019 result.

Given the electoral maths, any winner will require a coalition to form a government.

The first polling stations opened at or shortly before 7am (0500 GMT). Projections are due minutes after polls close at 5pm, with results being finessed over the ensuing hours.

Nehammer, the SPÖ and the Greens used their final rallies in Vienna to warn against Kickl, who has kept company with known neo-Nazis and extremists of the pan-European far-right nationalist Identitarian Movement. In the campaign, the incumbent called the FPÖ leader a “security risk” for Austria and a threat to its standing in Europe. Kickl at his Vienna rally slammed Nehammer as “personified lack of credibility – lies pave his path”.

Unlike the other centrist opposition parties, however, the ÖVP has not ruled out cooperating with the FPÖ in the next government, as it has twice in the past in taboo-breaking alliances at the national level. Nehammer, however, has said that Kickl as chancellor would be a non-starter, setting up a potential showdown in which the FPÖ would have to either jettison Kickl or take a backseat in government to win the ÖVP’s support.

Nehammer has actively sought to co-opt the FPÖ’s hardline stance on immigration, which the far right hopes to bring to bear at the EU level using Austria’s outsized influence in Brussels.

“The government has drastically reduced asylum applications,” the chancellor said on Thursday. “But we need more: asylum procedures in third countries before asylum seekers come through several European countries. And more: complete access to social welfare only after five years of residency in Austria.”

Migrant groups have expressed fear for the future in Austria, which critics say has failed to fully own up to its Nazi past. Rabbi Jacob Frenkel of Vienna’s Jewish Council has called the election a “moment of truth”.

Political scientist Julia Partheymüller, of the Vienna Centre for Electoral Research, said conservatives’ attempts across Europe to steal the hard right’s thunder on immigration rarely worked and often backfired.

Related: Anti-immigration mood sweeping EU threatens its new asylum strategy

“Instead of trying to win back the FPÖ’s voting base, which is difficult, they should focus on their core strengths like the economy and social welfare and put forward competent leaders,” she said. “What doesn’t work is taking over populist positions, which usually just leads to the entire political debate shifting [to the right].”

First-time voter Nina Brabcová, 16, said the far right had earned her support. “Even though I’m a ‘foreigner’ – my family came from Slovakia – I think the foreigners need to leave Austria, at least the criminal ones.” Speaking in Klagenfurt in Haider’s former fiefdom, she said many of her schoolmates shared her view of the FPÖ thanks in part to the party’s adept use of TikTok. “We don’t feel safe taking the train alone at night,” she said, citing a common theme in far-right campaigns.

Regardless of the outcome, the ÖVP seems poised to hold on to power, either in an alliance with the far right or an unwieldy, unprecedented three-way coalition with smaller centrist parties.

Many of the people at Kickl’s Vienna rally said they had come not out of support but to get a firsthand look at the political force likely to be shaping Austria’s future, one way or another, for years to come.

“It was incredibly depressing to see what people applauded for – just the response to ‘remigration’ alone was chilling,” said Alice, 32, a financial services employee who would only give her first name. “To be honest, tonight was scary.”