The far-right Freedom Party (FPO) led by Herbert Kickl won Austria's parliamentary election on Sunday, initial projections showed, potentially putting it in pole position to form a government for the first time in postwar history.
Projections show the FPO in first place but far from having an absolute majority, meaning it will need to find a coalition partner in parliament to form a stable government, if President Alexander Van der Bellen asks it to.
Based on a count of 50.2% of ballots, the FPO's share of the vote is projected to be 29.2%.
The only party that has clearly left the door open to a coalition with the FPO is the ruling conservative Austrian People's Party (OVP). But the OVP's leader, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, has ruled out forming a government with Kickl in it.
That, along with Van der Bellen's reservations about Kickl, raises the question of whether Kickl would step aside to let another member of his party become chancellor.
Given how hard he and his party have campaigned on the idea that Kickl should become "volkskanzler", or people's chancellor, that currently seems unlikely.
If the FPO is tasked with trying to form a coalition, the only party with which it would have a majority is the OVP.
The two parties overlap on many key policy areas, particularly in pushing for tougher rules on immigration.
Both also backed tax cuts to lift a dismal economy poised to contract for its second year running.
Negotiations could, however, be complicated by the difficult relations between Kickl and Nehammer. Nehammer spent the campaign casting Kickl as a conspiracy theorist unfit to govern.
The OVP is a party of power. It has been in every government, except a short-lived caretaker government that was officially party-free, for the past 37 years.
While many in the OVP feel ideologically closest to the FPO, the OVP would at least in principle have an alternative to a coalition with the FPO: a three-way alliance with the third-placed Social Democrats and one of the two parties on slightly less than 10%, the liberal Neos or the left-wing Greens.
In that scenario, the OVP would be the largest party, meaning Nehammer could stay on as chancellor. That could prove more tempting than being junior partner to the FPO.
President Van der Bellen, an ex-Greens leader, swore in FPO ministers including Kickl when they formed a coalition with the OVP in 2017. That coalition collapsed in scandal in 2019.
Van der Bellen also signed off on Kickl being dismissed from that government at the request of then-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the OVP, days before parliament sacked the whole government.
The president has since voiced reservations about Kickl and hinted he would either not let him become chancellor or not ask the FPO to try to form a government if it came first.
Still, the FPO's victory margin was projected to be stronger than final polls had indicated, strengthening Kickl's case.
Although it is established practice for the president to ask the first-placed party to do that, he is not obliged to.
"It is established practice but as far as I am aware it is not in the constitution," Van der Bellen said last year.
"What is in the constitution is that I appoint the chancellor... It is one of the very few points where the president has a completely free hand."
So Van der Bellen could take an entirely new approach.
