Austria election: Far-right Freedom Party heading for first national win [Video]

VIENNA, Austria –

The Freedom Party was headed for the first far-right win in a national parliamentary election in post-World War II Austria on Sunday, finishing ahead of the governing conservatives after tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other issues, a projection showed. But its chances of governing were unclear.

A projection for ORF public television, based on counting of about two-thirds of the votes, put support for the Freedom Party at 29.1 per cent and Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party at 26.3 per cent. The centre-left Social Democrats were in third place with 21 per cent. The outgoing government — a coalition of Nehammer’s party and the environmentalist Greens — lost its majority in the lower house of parliament.