Economics
Austrian Far Right Defeated in Cliffhanger Presidential Vote
- Green Van der Bellen beats Freedom Party’s Hofer to presidency
- Defeated party doesn’t rule out contesting the result
Alexander Van der Bellen, has been elected as Austria’s president.
Photographer: Lisi Niesner/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Austria elected economics professor Alexander Van der Bellen to be the country’s next president by a razor-thin margin, foiling Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer’s bid to become the first far-right head of state in western Europe since World War II.
After two rounds of voting that exposed the nation’s political divide on migration and relations with the European Union, Van der Bellen, a Green politician who ran as an independent, took 50.3 percent of the vote to 49.7 percent for Hofer. He won by 31,026 votes out of more than 4.5 million cast, according to Austria’s Interior Ministry.