The Austrian People’s Party (OVP), the conservative party of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, has taken the lead in Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections, according to an exit poll.
The OVP is ahead with 37 percent of the vote, followed by the Social Democratic Party (SPO) with 23 percent, and the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) with 17 percent, according to the figures of the OE24 public broadcaster.
The Austrian broadcasting corporation, ORF, gave Kurz's party 37.2 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats were on 22 percent, while the Freedom Party was on 16 percent, the Greens on 14.3 percent and the liberal Neos on 7.4 percent.
The former ruling party is projected to win 71 seats in the 183-seat National Council, the lower house of the national parliament. The Social Democrats are set to win 41 seats, the Freedom Party - 30, the Greens - 27 and Neos - 14.
After the initial projections came out, Green leader Werner Kogler addressed the lead of Kurtz’s party, stressing that his own party would consider forming an alliance only if the OVP makes a “radical change” in policy compared to that of the previous governing coalition.
"We need a sign of an about-turn”, Kogler remarked in a televised interview after the projections were announced.
Ibiza Video Scandal
Austria held a snap parliamentary vote on Sunday in the wake of a scandal in May involving footage, recorded at a villa in the Spanish island of Ibiza, showing Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache discussing exchanging government contracts for help in the elections with an alleged niece of a Latvian oligarch. The woman was later revealed to be a Bosnian student who was paid for the setup.
The scandal prompted Strache to resign, leading to the collapse of the governing coalition with the Austrian People's Party (OVP), headed by Sebastian Kurz. Strache described the situation as a trap and "political assassination."
