Austria's conservative leader Kurz wins parliamentary polls
[PRESSTV] Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz triumphed in Sunday's parliamentary election, as widely expected, but he will need a coalition partner to form a stable government, and the vote left him several options across the political spectrum.
The election followed the collapse in May of Kurz's coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) after a video sting scandal that forced FPO Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache to step down.
Kurz, 33, has been largely unscathed by the scandal, even gaining voters from the FPO as its support has slipped to roughly a fifth of the electorate from a little more than a quarter in the last vote in 2017.
As predicted by opinion polls for months, Kurz's People's Party (OVP) came a comfortable first, with 37.2% of the vote, according to a projection by pollster SORA for national broadcaster ORF published soon after voting ended.
The Social Democrats came second with 22.0%, well ahead of the FPO on 16.0% and the resurgent Greens on 14.3%, the projection showed. It has a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points.
Posted by: Fred 2019-09-30 |