Voters in Austria head to the ballot box Sunday to elect a new government, which many there expect will shift to the right and be headed by a 31-year-old chancellor with slicked-back hair. He would be Europe's youngest leader.
Sebastian Kurz, Austria's popular foreign minister, is said to be an avid hiker and windsurfer. At a campaign appearance Oct. 6 in his hometown of Vienna, young people jostled to get close to Kurz, a scene Austrian journalist Gernot Bauer says is quite common.
A rock star campaign that was 20 percent selfies
"He's like a pop star," said Bauer, who is national desk editor at the Austrian news magazine Profil. "He's like Justin Bieber, it takes hours (and) people want to make selfies with him. I think 20 percent of his campaign was just making photos and selfies. And this is also something that is a little bit criticized, because we don't know much about him."
What is known is that Kurz's center-right Austrian People's Party, which he took over in May, has a strong lead in opinion polls. He grew up in the working-class Vienna neighborhood of Meidling, where he still lives. His mother was a teacher and his father was a manager, said his friend and fellow party official, Gernot Bluemel.
"He was raised with the idea that if you work hard, if you play by the rules, then you can achieve your goals you can realize your dream," said Bluemel, who heads the Vienna branch of the Austrian People's Party. "In a country where the level of taxes is being raised higher and higher, this dream is becoming more and more unrealistic."
Kurz is determined "to make this dream possible again," Bluemel added.
Kurz has hard stance on refugees and immigration
The foreign minister has worked hard to rebrand his political party as an agent for change, even though it's been part of the Austrian government for the past three decades. Its new moniker is the "New People's Party," and the faction's traditional black color has been replaced with a more trendy turquoise.
What hasn't changed is Kurz's hard stance on refugees and immigration. In 2015 he vehemently opposed opening European Union borders to a million mostly Muslim asylum seekers and migrants, who streamed into Austria and points north and west. Such uncontrolled immigration causes security problems for Austria, he said during the recent Vienna campaign stop.
Kurz also supports curbing benefits for new arrivals, and making them learn German and adapt to local customs.
"He introduced 'integration by effort,' so that everybody is welcome here in Austria who is willing to make a contribution, to work for himself, to pay taxes, to play by the rules," Bluemel said. "And that was a way that was not so common in Austria then, but he made it popular."
A strong economy, but an election focused on change
During the recent campaign stop, Kurz told the crowd: "Please give us your vote so we have the power to make real change."
Bauer said change has been the mantra of this election, even though the Austrian economy is booming, jobs are up and unemployment is down. The election is being held a year earlier than originally scheduled after the current governing coalition fell apart.
"Maybe like everywhere in Europe, there's a feeling of insecurity over globalization," Bauer explained. Austrian parents used to say their children were better off than they were, "and now all the polls say that for the first time, parents are afraid their children might not be as well off as they are.
"Austria is a rich country. We don't have so many big problems, but still there is a desire for change — and Sebastian Kurz, he symbolizes this desire for change because he's fresh, though he is the longest serving minister in the actual government right now."
That irony is not lost on the right-wing, nationalist Freedom Party of Austria. The Euroskeptic faction, which is the largest opposition voice in Austria at the moment, accuses Kurz of co-opting their anti-refugee message. Bauer predicted Kurz could gain about 300,000 votes that would have gone to the Freedom Party, representing six or seven percentage points.
Nevertheless, Kurz could ask the Freedom Party to join him in governing if, as expected, his political party comes in first but fails to get a majority of the votes.
European leaders nervously watching Austria's election
The last time the two parties formed a government in Austria in 2000, objections to the Freedom Party — which originally was headed by a former Nazi — spurred widespread international criticism and EU sanctions. But such a backlash is not likely this time, as the party has toned down its approach and more EU member state governments are shifting to the right.
Bluemel added Kurz and their party will keep any coalition partner in check.
"The crucial point is we are pro-European," Bluemel said. "So we would never accept an anti-European course in the government coalition. We would never accept an anti-Semitic course in government. Never, ever, ever."
Still, many European leaders are nervously watching Sunday's election, especially because Austria is scheduled to take over the EU presidency next year.
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