People’s Party Sebastian Kurz would become Europe’s youngest leader if he can form a government.
Austria’s People’s Party is projected to finish first in Sunday’s parliamentary election, cementing the nation’s rightward shift and paving the way for 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz to become chancellor and Europe’s youngest leader.
Kurz, who Austria’s foreign minister, claimed victory after projections gave his right-leaning party a comfortable lead with more than 90% of the ballots counted.
Ballot projection’s show Kurz’s party receiving 31.4% of the vote, a gain of more than 7 percentage points from the 2013 election, according to the Associated Press. The centrist-left Social Democrats were projected to win 26.61%, and the far-right, euro-skeptic Freedom Party with 26.5% of the vote.
Austria is now governed by a Social Democratic-People’s Party coalition.
Final results will not be available until mid-week after absentee ballots are counted, but if the projections hold, Austria could see a ruling coalition between the People’s and Freedom parties.
Kurz’s People’s Party and the Freedom Party, led by Heinz-Christian Strache, focused their campaigns on concerns about immigration and Islam. The Social Democrats, the party in power led by Chancellor Christian Kern, centered their pitch to voters on ameliorating social inequality.
Kurz would becomes the EU’s youngest leader, and perhaps, the world’s youngest leader; France’s Emmanuel Macron is 39, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is believed to be 33.
The win for the conservative People’s Party and a strong finish for the Freedom Party, comes amid growing concerns about the 90,000 migrants — mostly Syrian Muslims — who have arrived in Austria since 2015.
„It is my assignment to change this country,“ said Kurz, who declared victory Sunday evening. „I will establish a new style in our country.“
The flood of migrants stoked fears among some Austrians that the country’s traditional Western and Christian culture was under attack and helped catapult both the People’s Party and the Freedom Party.
Kurz became Austria’s foreign minister in December and was elevated to head his party in May. He is credited with transforming the People’s Party, which has been the center-right party of post-war Austrian politics for more than 70 years, with a sharper nationalistic and anti-migrant message.
. Although the People’s Party had been part of Austria’s political establishment for decades, it managed to tack farther right with Kurz and appeal to an electorate that has grown concerned about the influx of immigrants. Kurz called for curbing welfare programs for new arrivals, threw his support behind banning Muslim women from wearing a face veil in public and required immigrants to learn German.
Kurz, a telegenic politician who drew big crowds at his public appearances, helped differentiate the People’s Party in style and rhetoric from the Freedom Party, which has embraced xenophobic comments about migrants and Muslims.
The Freedom Party was founded more than 60 years ago by former Nazis and has attracted the neo-Nazi fringe. The People’s Party, in contrast, used more measured language to make its case for cracking down on illegal immigration and concerns about radical Islam.
The Freedom Party shocked the country, and Europe, last year when its presidential candidate, Norbert Hofer, narrowly lost a bid for the Austrian presidency.
Hofer, during his campaign, promoted gun ownership as a way to keep Austrians safe during the refugee crisis. He also refused to sign a proposed European trade agreement with the United States, saying it would compromise Austrian sovereignty. He was known to wear a blue cornflower, a symbol of unity among German-speaking nations harkening back to Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria before World War II.
Taking up his party’s anti-establishment message for this election, Freedom Party leader Strache opened his final campaign speech in Vienna with a provocative slap at the Social Democrats: “We don’t want morons in our government!”
If Kurz brings the Freedom Party into a ruling coalition in the 183-member council, parliament’s dominant lower chamber, it would relegate Chancellor Kern and his Social Democrats into opposition for five years.
