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%.
