Herbert Kickle, leader of her Free Party Austria FPÖ has every reason to be satisfied with the result of Sunday’s elections. With a percentage of about 29%, his party, for the first time in its nearly 70-year history, won first place, mainly based on the large leakage of votes from the until now ruling Christian Democrats of the ÖVP People’s Party, which, with a loss of about 11 points, remained in second place position with 26.3%.

Voters ignored both the frequent far-right deviations of Kikl and other FPÖ executives, as well as his heavy government past, since both his previous participations in governments, both in 2000 and 2017, ended in scandals and crises. which led to the dissolution of the government.

For two decades, Austria has been a hothouse, or rather an experimental laboratory, where the social acceptance of extreme theories on the part of political forces is tested, from the demonization of immigrants and the discrediting of those in need of social benefits, to the hushing up of Nazi crimes and the hypocritical revision of the European history. At a time when all related parties in Europe are recording similar successes and the space of the Center seems to be flooded with more extreme ideas, the Austrian result is not surprising.

Latecomers

As its failure is not surprising Social Democratic Party of the country SPÖwhich has been identified with the state and nepotism to now return with a more left-wing, almost radical agenda, which put at its center the treatment of social inequalities, with the taxation of wealth at the forefront. The honorable effort of the leader of the SPÖ had neither the necessary time nor the condition of support from his staff to bear fruit and thus the party recorded another historic low with a percentage of 21.1%, which is however a “mirror” of of the overall evil spirit of European social democracy.

Voters also punished Austria’s once-radical Greens, a party that has always been far more “centrist” and “prudent” than its German sibling. The 8.3% figure means they have lost more than a third of their vote compared to 2019 which is not just about attrition due to government involvement, but reflects broader issues of identity and orientation in a time of multiple crises.

Who will rule now?

So Kickl is the big winner. If there is a comforting element in the result, it is that there is about 70%, who did not vote for him, as well as the fact that his power in the urban centers and especially in Vienna is much shorter. This, of course, rings the bell for the widening of the gap between the center and the periphery. A second element of optimism has to do with the so far categorical refusal of all other powers to cooperate with him. There seems to be a strong unanimity of the “democratic arc” in the assessment of the need for its political isolation.

The Christian Democrats may leave a window for cooperation if Kickl accepts that he will not be chancellor, but their experience of previous cooperation will probably dissuade them from the idea. They will perhaps use it as a bargaining chip against the Social Democrats, in the perspective of a collaboration with them. The two parties of the once “grand coalition” will finally have 93 seats, for a total of 183 and theoretically they can govern. But it will be a shaky majority of an alliance with a troubled past as well.

Therefore, the solution of a triple alliance with the addition of the NEOS liberals with 18 seats seems to many to be the best of the necessary solutions. Even if the experience of the three-party system, which has been governing Germany for three years only as a model, cannot be evaluated. But reality has its own rules. And whoever wants to survive must accept it. This also applies to parties.