Austria's Right-wing Populist Party Makes Huge Gains Fuelled by Migrant Crisis Fears

Head of Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) Heinz-Christian Strache
presents an election campaign poster in Vienna

THE TELEGRAPH: Austrian Freedom Party doubles its share of the vote in state of Upper Austria as Vienna expects nearly three times the number of asylum applications received last year

A Right-wing populist party in Austria has made huge gains in regional elections over growing concerns about Europe's migrant crisis.

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) won 30.4 per cent of the vote in the state of Upper Austria, the country's industrial heartland, a striking improvement on its performance in the state’s last election in 2009 when it took half as many votes with 15.3 per cent.

The party is closing in on the more centrist conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), which lost 10.4 per cent of its vote from the last election but managed to retain its lead to win 36.4 per cent.

Despite the welcome many refugees and migrants received from Vienna initially, fears over the influx in Austria appear to have played a significant role in the election. The country in recent months has become a major transit country for tens of thousands of migrants entering from Hungary en route to Germany in the past few months[.] » | Melanie Hall, Berlin | Monday, September 28, 2015