Alexander Van der Bellen has won Austria’s presidential election, preventing Norbert Hofer from becoming the EU’s first far-right head of state.
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Projected results late on Sunday put both Hofer, presented as the friendly and moderate face of the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), and Alexander van der Bellen, former head of the Greens, neck-and-neck on 50 percent.
Van der Bellen gained 50.3 percent of votes during the second round of presidential elections, while Hofer secured 49.7 percent of the votes, Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.
About 700,000 absentee ballots close to a sixth of total votes cast are slated to be counted by Monday evening for a final tally. He added that the efforts made during the election campaign didn’t go in vain and were an “investment for the future”.
“This all started with a dormant government that refused to push reforms and refused to communicate with the electorate”, said Thomas Hofer, a political consultant in Vienna.
The president of Austria is considered a ceremonial post.
Mirroring the depth of Austrian dissatisfaction with the status quo, candidates of the Social Democrats and the centrist People’s Party – the two parties that form the government coalition – were eliminated in last month’s first round of voting. After all absentee ballots were counted, Hofer’s rival, Van der Bellen, was declared the victor Monday. Those with a university degree and individuals living in cities tended to support Van der Bellen.
Most observers had thought that Van der Bellen, 72, an independent who stood with Green Party backing, would fail to beat his polished younger rival after lagging 14 points behind him in the first round on April 24.
Norbert Hofer candidate for Austria’s Presidency for Austria’s Freedom Party, FPOE, gestures during an after presidential election party in Vienna, Austria, Sunday, May 22, 2016.
Mr Van der Bellen, a retired economics professor, campaigned on a pro-EU platform.
“You will be amazed what a president is capable of”, Mr Hofer said during the campaign. Manual workers were also more likely to vote for Hofer than white-collar workers, with over 85 percent of the Freedom Party’s vote reportedly coming from the manual labor sector.
Austria stood at a political crossroads on Monday ahead of the final result of a knife-edge election that could make it the first European Union country with a president from the anti-immigration far-right.
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His party, however, traces its roots to the Nazi past that Austria has not confronted as openly as Germany. The size of the Freedom Party vote is the biggest sign yet of an increasing backlash in the European Union against the principle of free movement of people.
