Former Green party leader Alexander Van Der Bellen – affectionately known as "the professor" among his supporters – will be the next President of Austria.
Pollsters had thought that the race would be too close to call but soon after results started coming in, Van Der Bellen had already taken a decisive lead with 53.6 percent of the vote.
The far right Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer, conceded defeat in an surprisingly conciliatory fashion when he announced: “I have always said, the winner will be a good winner and the loser will be a good loser. And I ask all the people who have voted for me to accept that in a democracy the voter is always right, always. And that in the end we all have to unite and stand together. That is of special importance”.
A relieved Alexander Van Der Bellen talked about his ambition to be a President that the Austrians will call their own saying: “I hope that when people recognize me on the street or on the village green or in Vienna’s underground six years from now at the end of my term they’ll say, ‘look, there is our federal president’, not the federal president but everyone’s president.”
Faced with a stark choice between a far-right, populist or a pro European environmentalist, the Austrian people chose the latter.
Far-right candidate Nobert Hofer, of the Freedom Party, went head-to-head against Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Greens Party, and lost.
Campaigning on a pro-EU platform, and backed by the Green party, Alexander Van der Bellen described the presidential poll in May as a choice between “a co-operative and an authoritarian style.”
Norbert Hofer is according to some descriptions the “friendly face” of the far-right Freedom Party. The well-dressed, softly spoken, self proclaimed Margaret Thatcher fan has pushed traditional anti-immigration themes with a smile while using more moderate rhetoric than the party leader Heinz-Christian Strache.
Austria's election originally took place in May. Hofer lost out to Van der Bellen in May, 2016, by 31,000 votes.
The results of the original election were annulled after an investigation found vote-counting irregularities in several constituencies.More than 70,000 votes were found to have been affected by the irregularities, enough to swing the election result.
Austria’s constitutional court ruled that the vote must be repeated across the entire country, giving Mr Hofen a second chance at the presidency.
A re-run was planned for October 2, but was delayed again after problems with the glue used on ballot papers.
Alexander van der Bellen will be sworn in on January 26, 2017. He will serve as president for six years.
This election marks a potential turning point in European politics. Over the course of the year, and with the influence of the UK's Independence Party and the rise of Donald Trump to the US White House, EU leaders have been worried of a potentially unstoppable tide of populist movements throughout the bloc.
The vote is a test of support for European rightwing nationalism in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as US president. If he had won, Mr Hofer would have been the first far-right head of state in western Europe since the second world war.
A strong vote result could also foreshadow the Freedom party becoming the largest grouping after parliamentary elections due by September 2018 at the latest, giving it a lead role in a new Austrian government.
Formed by former Nazis in the 1950s, Austria’s Freedom party has long alarmed European mainstream politicians because of its whitewashing of the country’s Nazi history and association with anti-Semitism. Austria was ostracised in 2000 when the Freedom party joined a government coalition. As Europe’s immigration crisis unfolded last year, it evolved as a populist movement with clear anti-Islamist leanings.
The presidential election has already caused significant political upset. In a first round vote in April, the candidates of the center-left Social Democrats and center-right People’s party, Austria’s two mainstream parties which have run the country since 1945, were knocked out.
(EN)
