Austrian far right pledges election victory as tight race concludes

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

Focusing on grievances about immigration, Kickl's FPO has maintained a clear lead in polls for over a year, bolstered by voters' frustration with inflation above the European Union average and Austria's struggling economy.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer's conservative Austrian People's Party (OVP), however, has narrowed the gap to within the margin of error, as the OVP aims to present him as a statesman in contrast to the often abrasive and polarizing Kickl.

"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 No. 1," he emphasized, highlighting that it would be the first time the party, founded in the 1950s, 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.

Although new arrivals have plummeted in the past year, Kickl has pledged tough measures to prevent migrants from entering landlocked Austria, including creating a "Fortress Austria" that would force people back at the border and halting asylum grants.

The FPO and OVP overlap on other aspects of immigration and economic issues, such as tax cuts, but Nehammer has characterized Kickl as an extremist, stating he is open to a coalition with the FPO but that his party will not enter a government with Kickl.

Nehammer himself may have benefited from his management of the response to severe flooding that hit Austria this month.

Whoever wins will fall far short of an absolute majority and will need a coalition partner to form a stable government. The FPO's only apparent option would be the OVP, while the OVP could consider the FPO or potentially form a three-way alliance with the Social Democrats and a smaller party.

In a clear swipe at Kickl, Nehammer told a closing rally that he and his party stand "for the politics of the centre, against the radical, for stability instead of chaos. We do not live off of problems; we solve them."