Results of Austria’s presidential election this weekend remain unknown.
The race is so tight that absentee ballots counted later this week will determine the outcome.
With 98% of the vote counted, anti-immigration Freedom Party FPÖ candidate Norbert Hoferm is in a dead heat with Green party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen
About 900,000 absentee ballots (14% of the overall total), need to be counted.
This is the first time since WWII that the center left and center right parties were knocked out of the election in the first round.
The BBC reports Austria Presidential Vote: Run-Off Race too Close to Call.
Partial results in Austria’s run-off presidential election, which pitches the far right against an independent, suggest it is too close to call.
Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party and Alexander Van der Bellen were each on 50%, with 98% of the vote counted.
The presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament, Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz, have both expressed concern over a Hofer victory.
Positions
The role of president is largely ceremonial, but the president does have the ability to call for new elections.
Following the first round of voting, Chancellor Werner Faymann resigned after losing the support of his Social Democratic party colleagues.
Death of the “Grand Coalition”
Following the resignation of Werner Faymann on 9 May 2016, Reinhold Mitterlehner served as acting chancellor until 17 May 2016 when Christian Kern was sworn into office.
Kern is the new head of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) a center-left party. Mitterlehner is head of ÖVP, the center-right Austrian People’s Party.
ÖVP is the junior party in a “grand coalition” that is now burnt toast.
The coalition will rule until the next election, but realistically speaking, the grand coalition died when both parties failed to make the presidential runoff.
Austria’s grand coalition is a political casualty of Merkel’s inept decision to welcome refugees with open arms.
Faymann supported Merkel and paid the price. See Political Price for Supporting Merkel: Austria’s Chancellor Resigns, Calls for “New Start”.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The theme repeats, ‘Vote the rascals out’.
I’d take an aeronautical engineer over an economics prof (strike one) and former Green Party socialist (strike two) any day.
I smell a rat…..
Like George Soros
“This is the first time since WWII that the center left and center right parties were knocked out of the election in the first round.”
Talk about a hollowed out middle class!
Oh, well. Still, what a quaint notion : the very idea of Europeans voting for their leaders.
Its not quaint, they realize it is more efficient to openly validate dictatorship by simply participating than to have it validate itself by the use of force. It just happens that some politicians are less clueless than others, something that grates with the regional indoctrination due to their actual demonstration of personal choice where the prime regional requisite is to only offer the perception of choice. The latter keeps everyone happy, the public don’t have to involve themselves in decisions but are able to believe they are taking them, while those that do not wish to publish their agenda are later free to present whatever story they like as its justification.
But pick someone from the right who may actually stand up and legislate for the local minority and according to a strict interest, well that will never do, as restrictive policy is a contradiction in terms of free access by central authority.
If you are not common you are an outcast. Unfortunately it is hard work to remain common nowadays, the barrier has been set so low that obviously its creators were oblivious to the fact that most people were already stooping double to get under it. Aha, you might think that climbing the hurdle instead would be more apt, but as you should know, all those above mean get punished for it, demonstrations of success being strictly a small sanctioned reserve for the likes of the humble consumer on benefits.
Hofer doesn’t have a chance. He makes too much sense. He supports gun rights and doesn’t want his country overrun with muslim refugees.
Even if he wins they’ll rig it so he loses.
In the end the rulers elite will decide who wins.
… and Bellen wins, according to latest reports.
51.9 to 48.1 without postal ballots. Hofer needs 41.8% of postal votes to win, should manage that.
Hofer took male manual worker vote, Bellen female white collar, looks something like a gender class war!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36355615
Alexaner wait till you experience the madness of globalism.
On that note I hope you don’t lock your doors at night.
That would be micro-nationalism!
“In 1919 Van der Bellen’s grandparents, father and uncles fled the Bolsheviks and settled in the newly independent Republic of Estonia. When Estonia was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940, Van der Bellen’s parents Alexander and Alma Van der Bellen fled to Germany, where they ended up in a refugee camp. They eventually settled in Vienna, before again fleeing the Red Army and arriving in Tyrol, where Alexander Van der Bellen spent his childhood.[1] He has described himself as a “child of refugees”. ”
Seems everywhere his family went got invaded ….
Trumpism, Is spreading maybe the people have awakened common sense has replaced the generic Europe one size fits all mentality.
Mish,
Why is no one talking about what is going on in Argentina ? On one hand drastic comments are made but there is no substance or details to support those comments. Thanks,
Chuck O’Reilly
303-681-3394
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/05/23/article-urn:publicid:ap.org:1f78d26501674096b547a28131e82527-4zws8ModGHab6857bf49ad5cf75c-961_634x421.jpg