Austrian conservative Kurz clear winner in election - projections

Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz's party has clearly won Sunday's snap parliamentary election and has several options for a coalition partner that will give it a stable majority, projections based on a partial vote count showed. Kurz's People's Party came first on 37.1%, well ahead of the Social Democrats on 22.6%, the far-right Freedom Party on 16.7%, the Greens on 13.0% and the liberal Neos on 7.8%, a projection by ARGE Wahlen for Austrian news agency APA showed soon after polls closed at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT).

A projection by pollster SORA for broadcaster ORF with a 1.8 percentage point margin of error showed similar results.