Austria elections: Sebastian Kurz's OVP 'leads' vote

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The conservative People's Party (OVP), led by 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, is projected to finish first in Austria's snap parliamentary election, according to initial exit polls that suggest a clear shift to the right.

A forecast by public broadcaster ORG showed centre-right OVP winning 30.2 percent of Sunday's vote, followed by the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) with 26.8 percent and the Social Democratic Party (SPO) at 26.3 percent. The projection was based on 42 percent of counted votes. Another forecast by pollster ARGE Wahlen also showed the OVP in the lead. According to the exit polls, Kurz's OVP is well short of a majority. The most likely outcome appears to be a coalition government led by the OVP with the support of the far-right FPO. Austria's election arrived almost a year earlier than expected, following a breakdown of an OVP-SPO coalition government in May.

Kurz, named OVP leader in May, pledged to shake up Austrian politics, which for decades has been dominated by coalitions between his party and SPO. He built his popularity by adopting many of the FPO's mantras, making this an election defined by issues raised by the far right, such as stricter immigration and the role of Islam in Austrian society. "What dominated the headlines [ahead of the election] was the attempt to try and change the way that the Muslims have been integrated into society here," Al Jazeera's David Chater, reporting from the OVP headquarters in Austria's capital, Vienna, said.

"It does seem that this debate has been controlled by the centre right and the far right," he added. "It seems pretty clear, if the polls are correct, that we will have a coalition between OVP and FPO reshaped under Kurz, controlling the government in parliament, and that would really change Austria's politics."