The outcome of Austria’s elections today was quite good:
The leader of Austria’s right-leaning People’s Party has declared victory in a national election that puts him on track to become the world’s youngest leader.
Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz, 31, claimed the win on Sunday night after projections gave his party a comfortable lead with more than 90 percent of the ballots counted…
The young leader… has pledged to cut benefits for all foreigners in Austria and has vowed to stop the European Union meddling in the country’s politics…
The projections had the People’s Party getting 31.7 percent of the vote, a gain of more than seven percentage points from the 2013 election…
The projections showed the centre-left Social Democrats receiving 26.9 percent and the vote and the anti-migrant, eurosceptic Freedom Party 26.0 percent…
As well as his pledge on payouts to migrants, Kurz wants to slash Austria’s red tape and keep the EU out of national affairs…
By taking a hard line on immigration that left little daylight between him and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), 31-year-old Foreign Minister Kurz managed to propel his People’s Party to first place and draw some support away from an FPO buoyed by Europe’s migration crisis.
Both parties increased their share of the vote from the last parliamentary election in 2013, marking a sharp shift to the right.
