Grapevine

Austrian far right pledges to win Sunday's election as tight race winds up

Austrian Chancellor and Head of the Austrian People's Party (OeVP) Karl Nehammer (L) and chairman and top candidate of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) Herbert Kickl (R) meet during their pre-election tv debate hosted by Austrian state network ORF in Vienna, Austria on September 23, 2024.

The leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO), Herbert Kickl, pledged on Friday to win this weekend's parliamentary election in what would be a historic first, even as opinion polls show the race is now too close to call.

Doggedly keeping grievances about immigration in focus, Kickl's FPO has had a clear lead in polls for more than a year, helped by voters' frustration with inflation above the European Union average and Austria's misfiring economy.

"The people are the wind at our backs and the system is our headwind and the people are always stronger than the system, and we will prove it on Sunday," the 55-year-old Kickl said in a typically populist address at a closing campaign event in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral in the heart of Vienna.

"This time we will be number 1," he said, underscoring the fact that it would be the first time the party founded in the 1950s had won a parliamentary election. It secured its first national victory this year when it beat the OVP by less than a percentage point in June's European election.