Austrian far right shows strength with state election win in Styria

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By Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) -Austria’s far-right Freedom Party won a state election in Styria for the first time on Sunday in an echo of September’s general election and a new show of strength while national coalition talks continue without it.

Sunday’s election in Styria, home to Austria’s second city, Graz, raises pressure on party leaders currently attempting to forge the country’s first three-way government since 1949.

It is only the second state which the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO) has ever won, the first having been Carinthia, the fiefdom of then-FPO leader Joerg Haider in his heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“There’s been a landslide in Styria. I didn’t expect such a resounding result,” the FPO’s deputy leader in Styria, Stefan Hermann, told national broadcaster ORF.

A projection by pollster Foresight for ORF and news agency APA showed the FPO first on 35.0% and the ruling conservative People’s Party (OVP) second on 26.7%. The estimate, based on a count of 95% of votes cast, had a margin of error of 0.4 percentage points.

It is the first time since World War Two that neither the OVP nor the Social Democrats (SPO) have won in the state bordering Slovenia where actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was born.

The FPO will need a coalition partner to secure a majority in Styria’s state assembly and form a government.

Nationally, FPO leader Herbert Kickl continues to lambast efforts to form what he calls a “coalition of losers” by the parties that came second, third and fourth in September’s election. He argues that since the FPO came first he should have been tasked with forming a government.

The FPO secured 29% of the vote in September’s election, meaning it needed a coalition partner to govern.

Alexander Van der Bellen, an 80-year-old former leader of the left-wing Greens, said last month that since no other party was prepared to govern with the FPO under Kickl, he had to task Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the OVP as leader of the second-placed party with forming a government.

Nehammer is in coalition talks with the leaders of the SPO and liberal Neos.

Styria’s OVP Governor Christopher Drexler said the main issue raised by voters was why Van der Bellen gave Nehammer rather than Kickl the task of forming a government, suggesting many voters backed the FPO in protest.

“National politics dominated this election,” he said in a speech to supporters.

(Reporting by Francois MurphyEditing by Dave Graham and Jane Merriman)