London: Austria’s far-right party has won a historic first national election after tapping into voters’ fears of immigration and the Ukraine war, exit polls predict.

The result would consolidate pro-Russian, anti-establishment forces in central Europe. The projection for ORF public television put support for the Freedom Party at 29.1 per cent and for Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party at 26.2 per cent. The centre-left Social Democrats were in third place with 20.4 per cent.

The projection – which includes exit polling data as well as analysis of counted votes – is usually a highly reliable predictor of the outcome within plus or minus 1.5 per cent. The final result will be published on Monday after postal votes have also counted.

Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and long-time campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, has promised Austrians he would build “Fortress Austria” to restore their security, prosperity and peace. It would be Austria’s first far-right national election win post-World War II.

One of Europe’s longest-standing parties of the populist right, it has embraced increasingly hardline and extremist policies on immigration and has never come first in a national election before. It was founded in the 1950s by former members of the SS and other Nazi veterans.

Kickl campaigned on an end to sanctions against Russia, was critical of Western military aid to Ukraine and wants to opt out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defence project launched by Germany.

He has used the term “Volkskanzler”, or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Kickl has rejected the comparison.

In its election platform, the Freedom Party called for “remigration of uninvited foreigners” and for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an “emergency law”.