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| FM Kurz’s Conservative party leads in Austrian snap election, right-wing FPO second – exit polls | FM Kurz’s Conservative party leads in Austrian snap election, right-wing FPO second – exit polls |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Two anti-migrant parties are leading in the Austrian parliamentary election, with the conservative People’s Party (OVP) headed by Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in first, according to exit polls. The right-wing Freedom Party (FPO) is poised to come in second. | |
| According to exit polls, Kurz’s OVP has taken a clear lead in the election with 30.1 percent of the vote, while the right-wing anti-immigrant FPO is neck and neck with the Social Democrats for second, as the gap between the two parties is less than one percent. | |
| While the FPO secured 26.8 percent backing, the Social Democrats received 26.3 percent support, a projection by pollster SORA said shortly after polls closed. This is based on an early count of 42 percent of non-postal ballots. | |
| The results are regarded as a success for the right-wing populists, as they received six percent more of the vote than in the previous election, in which the FPO received 20.5 percent. | |
| The results for the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO), which won the previous election and was the senior member of the ruling coalition before the snap election, is already being called by some analysts the worst in the party’s history, as previously it always came in either first or second. | |
| Other parties have so far managed to secure only single digits. The liberal NEOS (The New Austria and Liberal Forum) received 5.3 percent of the vote, while the Greens and the Pilz List received 4.9 and 4.3 percent respectively. | |
| The election campaigns were dominated by the issue of migration. Kurz, 31, who has been Austria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration since 2013, particularly focused on the refugee issue in his campaign. | |
| If Kurz becomes chancellor, he will be the youngest ever in Austria. | |
| Foreign Minister Kurz previously backed plans to block refugee routes into Europe and supported a ban on full-face veils, which came into force in Austria just weeks before the election. He also repeatedly spoke about the need to foster integration, particularly advocated shutting down Islamic kindergartens where children have little or no command of German. | |
| Public support for the FPO, founded by a former Nazi SS member after the end of the World War II, saw a major boost during the refugee crisis, as the party proposed to stop immigration and criticized Islam. | |
| Since 2015, Austria received around 150,000 asylum requests, which is equivalent to over one percent of the population. | |
| In December 2016, FPO candidate Norbert Hofer fell short of being elected president after running neck and neck with left-leaning candidate Alexander Van der Bellen. | |
| Ahead of the October 2017 parliamentary election, FPO candidate Heinz-Christian Strache managed to win significant public support by focusing on the issues of immigration, unemployment, the minimum wage, and pensions. | |
| The OVP-SPO coalition was set to rule Austria until September 2018, but it collapsed in May after failing to agree on economic reforms for months. This prompted then-head of the OVP Reinhold Mitterlehner to resign.His successor, Sebastian Kurz, called for an early election, eventually scheduled for October 15. |