Populist leaders H. C. Strache of the Freedom Party (FPOe) with Dr. Jörg Haider of The Alliance for the Future (BZOe)
Far-Right Gains In Austria Vote
Election results could bring a Nationalist coalition
Austria’s Social Democrats won the most votes in the country’s early election but far-right parties made significant gains, the interior ministry has said.
Preliminary official results from Sunday’s poll show Social Democrats with 29.7% of the vote.
But the country’s two far-right parties made large gains, winning a total vote share of 29% between them.
The BBC’s Bethany Bell in Vienna said that rise in support is the result of protest votes on a variety of issues.
Our correspondent said the resurgent far right can be attributed to a mixture of anti-European Union sentiment, some anti-immigrant positions and a general sense of discontent with the two traditional centrist parties.
The conservative People’s Party, which had been in a faltering coalition with the Social Democrats that collapsed after 18 months, won 25.6%.
Young voters
Interior Minister Maria Fekter said the far-right Freedom Party had won 18.01% of the vote and the Alliance for the Future of Austria had 10.98%.
Our correspondent described the far-right gains as a “slap in the face” to the centrist parties, which suffered their worst results since World War II.
Final results will not be released until 6 October after absentee and postal ballots, making up about 10% of the votes, are counted.
For the first time in an EU country, 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote. This bloc represented about 200,000 of the 6.3 million-strong electorate. (…Full Article)
Predictably we also have a Zionist double standard alert:
Israel is ‘concerned’ over Austria’s elections
