Austrian populist Mr Joerg Haider's far-right party plunged in today's elections, but a landslide victory by his conservative partners could save their centre-right ruling coalition, projections showed.
Chancellor Mr Wolfgang Schuessel of the conservative People's Party has signalled he is open to renewing the coalition whose collapse in September triggered snap elections, but talks could take weeks and no outcome is certain.
"Before the final results one shouldn't say anything. We will have talks with everybody," People's Party general-secretary Ms Maria Rauch-Kallat said on Austrian state television ORF when asked about possible coalition choices.
But the Social Democrats, who came in second behind the conservatives, said they believed Schuessel was more prone to reviving his coalition with the far-right than to forming a "grand coalition" of the two biggest parties.
"It does seem that there will be a black (People's Party)-blue (Freedom Party) coalition again," said Social Democratic party manager Ms Doris Bures.
According to the latest projections by state television ORF, Mr Haider's Freedom Party only garnered 10.4 per cent of votes, an almost 17 per cent drop in results from Freedom's record results in 1999.
The projections, which were based on almost half the votes counted, lent credibility to the claim that voters were tired of Freedom's in-fighting and the policy swings that led to the break-up of the centre-right coalition.
Schuessel's conservatives surged to 42.9 per cent, their best result in two decades, after the chancellor successfully co-opted Mr Haider's tough anti-immigration stance and wooed away Freedom's most popular figure, Finance Minister Mr Karl-Heinz Grasser.