Eternal EU election thriller

Austria faces a landslide election

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/ORF/Thomas Ramstorfer, AFP, Picturedesk, stock.adobe)

It took a whole six hours on Sunday evening before reliable figures for the EU elections in Austria were finally available. The last polling stations closed at 5 p.m., but after the first trend forecast it was a case of waiting until 11 p.m. for the count. And that caused quite a stir.

There was hardly any doubt about the FPÖ's victory with top candidate Harald Vilimsky right from the start, but it was not nearly as clear-cut as expected in the afternoon: According to the projection including the postal vote forecast from 11 pm, the Freedom Party landed at 25.5 percent, less than one percentage point ahead of the ÖVP with its front man Reinhold Lopatka, who achieved 24.7 percent. The SPÖ with Andreas Schieder is in third place with 23.3 percent.

The preliminary result and the projection including postal vote forecast from 11 pm:

Greens save fourth place, NEOS in double digits for the first time
The Greens, whose lead candidate Lena Schilling was the most talked about in the election campaign, plummeted from 14.1 percent last time to 10.9 percent. At least they were able to keep the NEOS with Helmut Brandstätter at bay, who achieved 10.1% (including postal votes) and thus narrowly achieved a double-digit result at federal level for the first time.

Here are the top candidates in the order of the provisional results: Harald Vilimsky (FPÖ), Reinhold Lopatka (ÖVP), Andreas Schieder (SPÖ), Lena Schilling (Greens), Helmut Brandstätter (NEOS).

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

KPÖ and DNA fail
The small parties did quite respectably: The KPÖ achieved 2.9 percent and the DNA list 2.7 percent. However, both clearly failed to enter the EU Parliament.

The epic EU election day from krone.at to read up on:

The Austrian election results by province:

The latest figures on a pan-European level:

FPÖ in first place nationwide for the first time
On Monday, around 109,000 ballot card votes will still be counted, but these can only result in changes in the tenth of a percent range. What is certain, however, is that the FPÖ has finished in first place for the first time in its history in an election at federal level.