Postal votes were being counted in Austria’s presidential election Monday as far-right candidate Norbert Hofer had a slight lead over independent Alexander Van der Bellen in the race, according to the interior ministry.
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In a Facebook post conceding to Van der Bellen on Monday, Hofer said he was thankful for the opportunity given, urged voters not to despair and said he would have been happy to take care of the country. The president-elect Alexander Van der Bellen, who won the election by just 31,000 votes, vowed to deal with the “divisions” in the country, which were exposed during the election campaign.
He added: “Please don’t be disheartened”. “The effort that went into this campaign isn’t lost”, he wrote, “but is an investment in the future”.
The two rivals had finished neck-and-neck in Sunday’s elections, with Mr. Van der Bellen scoring 48.1 per cent against the 51.9 per cent collected by Mr. Hofer, from the Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant Freedom party.
Overnight the result was too close to call, with Mr. Hofer leading by 3.8 percentage points before around 700,000 postal votes, which eventually swung the election in Mr. Van der Bellen’s favour, were counted.
The fact that Hofer held any lead at all was alarming, given that he leads the far-right Freedom Party.
“But in the last 14 days, there has been such a momentum among voters”.
“It is important that a president who represents a pro-European attitude is elected”, said European Union enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn, who is Austrian.
The presidency is a largely ceremonial post but European Union leaders feared that a Hofer victory could be the springboard for Freedom Party success in the next parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2018.
Van der Bellen, 72, won 50.3 percent of the vote to defeat right-wing candidate Norbert Hofer.
Support for Hofer among men was 60%, while among women it was 60% for Van der Bellen. And Mr Hofer has said he would not swear in a female minister who wore a hijab, which he has described as a sign of oppression.
Latvia’s parliament elected its Green Party defense minister, Raimonds Vejonis, to serve as president in June 2015. “Anything else than van der Bellen would have been irresponsible and stupid”.
Austria was polarized by the run-off for what is traditionally a ceremonial role, with most Austrians saying the result would amount to a fundamental decision about the country’s political future.
European Jewish groups reacted with relief to the victory by a left-wing politician over a far-right candidate in Austria’s presidential elections.
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Van der Bellen said he planned to unite Austria after its nearly dead-even split in the vote.
