Kickl rages. Actually, FPÖ member of the National Council Susanne Fürst is supposed to stand for the Freedom Party in the forthcoming federal presidential election in autumn 2022. But their bad poll numbers are bad, to the growing frustration of FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, as an insider from the FPÖ leadership reveals to eXXpress. The latest plans of the blue party and club chairman are unusual, as the FPÖ source reports. Because instead of Fürst, the FPÖ leader would like to enter the race himself for the place in the Hofburg.
The goals he has set himself are big. According to the insider, Kickl absolutely wants to overshadow Norbert Hofer’s sensational success in the 2016 election. As a reminder: Hofer achieved 49.65 percent in the 2016 runoff election, which was later rescinded. At the time, less than one percentage point separated him from Federal President Alexander van der Bellen (50.35 percent). In the repeated second ballot, van der Bellen was then able to extend his lead.
Kickl wants more! With an even greater success, he wants to trump Hofer and thus cement his line as actually promising for the FPÖ in the future.
With a radical anti-corona course that Kickl gave the Freedom Party, the FPÖ was able to look forward to a meager short-term high of 21 percent in the opinion polls in autumn 2021. Now it has fallen back to 18 percent and is not moving from there. That’s not the only thing that makes Kickl’s course highly controversial within the party. The fact that the blue party leader has banished himself and his party to the opposition bench for the foreseeable future is causing displeasure. No party has the Blue Party on their radar as a potential coalition partner.
It remains to be seen whether the party leader, who is more known for his radical opposition, can score points as a representative supreme head of state and achieve electoral success.
