Austria moves right in Sunday's general election

Election night party taking place at the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) headquarters in Vienna on Sunday, Oct. 15. Heinz-Christian Strache's party will be in either 2nd or a strong third place once the final tally is completed, sometime after tomorrow, Monday, Oct. 16.

By Carolyn Yeager

UPDATE: Final vote results: ÖVP - 31.5%=62 parliamentary seats. SPÖ - 26.9%=52 seats.  FPÖ - 26.0% =51 seats. NEOS - 5.3%= 10 seats. PILZ - 4.4%= 8 seats.

SUNDAY'S VOTE IN AUSTRIA TURNED OUT WELL for the populist, anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPÖ), even if not as great as we might have hoped. Hans-Christian Strache's party has just pulled ahead of the  Social Democratic party (SPÖ) for the first time. The People's Party (ÖVP) has won with around 31% of the vote.

The FPÖ is now almost a point ahead of the SPÖ, although this may change by mid-week when all the "postal" ballots (mail-in) are counted. They sometimes tend to favor the SPÖ. Here is an active page with charts and maps showing who voted for whom. At this time, it's showing Sebastion Kurz' People's Party with 31.4% of the vote, the Social Democrats (currently in power) with 26.7, and the Freedom Party with 27.4%.

The Green Party is the biggest loser with only 3.8%, not enough to send any representatives to the federal parliament. The FPÖ will be sending around 53 reps to the SPÖ's 51, and the OeVP's 62 representatives. The FPÖ is expected to become the coalition partner of the ÖVP to form a government. This will be the first time the FPÖ has been in government since 2000.

None of this is certain however. Kurz ran on a program to cut payments to asylum seekers, plus no benefits for new refugees until they have been in the country for 5 years. He is said to be unwilling to work any longer with Christian Kern, leader of the SPÖ, who says he has no intention of stepping down. If he should be forced out, however, the situation could change in this regard.

More to come as this story is updated.

First analyses of the election:  Almost six out of ten workers voted for the FPÖ. The SPÖ has thus lost its classic clientele. Only with retirees and officials did they score more than FPÖ and ÖVP. Surprising to me is that the Freedom Party won a plurality of the under-30 vote, where the Social Democrats did poorly (17%)! On the other hand, the FPÖ lost the over-60 vote, where I thought they would be strongest. No, they're currently at 19% only, while the Peoples Party is at 36% and the SPÖ at 34%. But this bodes well for the future!  They came in a close second to the ÖVP in the 30 to 60 age group.

Final counting of ballots:  The Interior Ministry says it expects to have the more than 600,000 absentee votes counted by late Monday and the rest — between 50,000 and 100,000 — by Thursday.

Merkel comments: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she congratulated Kurz on Sunday. On Monday, she credited Kurz's "energetic" modernization of his Austrian People's Party for his success but said the strength of the right-wing Freedom Party is a "big challenge" for its Austrian rivals. Merkel played down her differences with Sebastian Kurz on refugee policy, calling them "not so contentious." She added: "If he becomes Austrian chancellor, I will of course go into this more deeply, but I am not so dramatically concerned." 

Deutsche Welle German state news agency and other usual suspects are already warning about a coalition government between the People's Party and the Freedom Party - as here. Only a couple of months ago DW changed its policy on comments and no longer allows reader comments on its Opinion articles. Less and less "democracy" under the pro-EU umbrella.