The far right won Austria’s election, but may end up in opposition

The Freedom Party of Austria won Austria’s legislative election on 29 September. Yet as Reinhard Heinisch explains, it will be challenging for the party to form a viable government.

Austria’s parliamentary elections were a watershed. For the first time in the country’s democratic history, the populist far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) came first in a national election, beating the two parties that founded and long dominated Austria, the Christian conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democrats…