Van der Bellen confirmed victor in Austrian presidential vote

The victory of former Greens party leader Alexander Van der Bellen over far-right rival Norbert Hofer in Sunday’s presidential election was confirmed by provisional final results released on Tuesday.
A count of postal ballots after Sunday’s vote gave Van der Bellen 53.8 percent of all valid votes cast and Freedom Party candidate Hofer 46.2 percent, the Interior Ministry said.
The most closely watched projection, by pollster SORA, had put Hofer on 46.7 percent and Van der Bellen on 53.3 percent.
Hofer conceded defeat on Sunday evening after voters roundly rejected his bid to become the first freely elected far-right head of state in Europe since World War Two.
The head of Austria’s anti-immigrant far right said Tuesday he was “optimistic” about the next general elections, even though official results showed the party lost a presidential runoff by a greater-than-projected 350,000 votes.
“The time was not ripe for a Freedom Party president. Of course this is a pity, but the result is sensational for us,” Heinz-Christian Strache told a news conference in Vienna.
“Looking ahead to the next legislative elections, it shows us what is possible,” he said. “We look to the future with optimism... Our aim (is) very clear, to become the biggest party in Austria.”
The final result showed Van der Bellen in fact managed to increase his winning margin more than 10-fold from 30,863 votes in May’s first run-off, which was annulled over procedural breaches.
The total number of votes for Van der Bellen was 2.47 million and for Hofer 2.12 million, a difference of 348,231 votes.
This was thanks in part to higher turnout of 74.2 percent compared to 72.6 percent among the 6.4 million voters.
The outcome prompted relief Sunday and Monday among centrist European politicians fearful of another triumph for populist politics after Donald Trump’s US election win last month and Britain’s referendum decision in June to leave the European Union.
Before Sunday at least, the FPOe was leading opinion polls ahead of the next general election, which is due in late 2018, with more than 30 percent of voter intentions.
However many experts expect an earlier vote because of conflict within Chancellor Christian Kern’s “grand coalition” of his center-left Social Democrats (SPOe) and the center-right People’s Party (OeVP)

Source: Arab News