The partners in Austria’s pro-Europe, centrist coalition scraped a combined majority yesterday despite recording their worst election results since World War II and losing support to the far-right Freedom Party and a new liberal party.

Chancellor Werner Faymann’s Social Democrats (SPO) – who had campaigned on a platform of defending jobs and pensions and redistributing wealth – got 27.1 per cent of the vote, down more than two points from 2008, preliminary results showed.

The conservative People’s Party (OVP) also shed more than two points to 23.8 per cent, giving the two parties that have dominated post-war Austrian politics a combined – albeit reduced – majority for a new five-year term in Parliament.

Faymann said he would invite OVP leader Michael Spindelegger to join him in a new coalition government but acknowledged the result was not an overwhelming vote of confidence.

“There is much to do, on the one hand to justify this result and on the other hand to build up more trust for the future,” he told ORF television.

Spindelegger said he was open to talks, but refused to rule out a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) and the new Eurosceptic party of Austro-Canadian carparts magnate Frank Stronach – a combination that would be numerically feasible.

“This result is a wake-up call,” he told ORF. “We can’t simply go on as before.”

Sylvia Kritzinger, head of the social science methods department at Vienna University, said she saw Spindelegger’s comments as posturing to gain leverage with the SPO.

“I think that the grand coalition is going to continue its work although you can’t really call it a ‘grand’ coalition any longer,” she said.

The anti-immigration and anti-Islam FPO, which seeks to end taxpayer-funded bailouts of weaker euro zone countries, boosted its share of the vote by almost four points to 21.4 per cent.

“This is an incredible success. We are the election-night victors,” said FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache, 44, a polarising figure who is popular with many young people but anathema to the political establishment that he loves to bash.

Populists hostile to the euro or to immigration have ridden a wave of anger over austerity, recession and unemployment to make inroads from the Netherlands to Italy, France, Finland and Greece since the financial crisis began in 2008.