Conservatives win most seats

– Austrian conservatives won the most seats in snap elections yesterday, putting their 33-year-old leader Sebastian Kurz on track to retake power but forcing him into tough coalition negotiations after a corruption scandal sent his far-right former allies tumbling.

Kurz’s People’s Party (OeVP) won 37 percent, up almost six percentage points from the last election two years ago, but not enough to form a government on its own, according to projections based on partial results.

The Greens were also big winners as climate change rose to the top of voters’ concerns, securing around 14 percent of the vote.

That means they will be viable coalition partners for a new government, but Green leader Werner Kogler said last night that the party would need to see “radical change” from the right-wing policies pursued by the previous coalition.

Kurz’s former allies, the farright Freedom Party (FPOe), were the biggest losers of the night, falling 10 percentage points to around 16 percent following the spectacular “Ibiza-gate” corruption scandal in May.

The affair brought down the OeVP-FPOe coalition after just 18 months in government and triggered yesterday’s snap poll.

The centre-left Social Democrats look set for their worst-ever result on around 22 percent of the vote, with the liberal NEOS party winning around seven percent.

A total of 6.4 milion people were eligible to vote in the small Alpine country. –