Anti-immigration candidate Norbert Hofer conceded the Austrian presidential election to independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen in an election that will bring a sigh of relief to Brussels.
The Financial Times reports Far Right Concede Defeat in Austrian Presidential Election.
Norbert Hofer, the Freedom party candidate, won 46.7 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s contest according to early results and projections. His opponent Alexander Van der Bellen, a Green politician who ran as an independent, won 53.3 per cent.
If the forecasts are correct, Mr Van der Bellen would have increased his lead after narrowly winning against Mr Hofer when the election was first run in May.
The result will come as a relief for Europe’s mainstream political leaders, suggesting support for political disruption may have reached a limit following Mr Trump’s election and the UK vote to leave the EU.
“The narrative of these forces being unstoppable has been broken — or at least stalled,” said Thomas Hofer, political analyst in Vienna. “It lifts some of the pressure and gloom about where Europe is going.”
Nevertheless the strong showing by the Freedom party — which was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s — is still likely to be seen as a boost for Marine Le Pen, leader of the France’s National Front ahead of her country’s presidential election next year. Herbert Kickl, who ran Mr Hofer’s campaign, described the vote as “historic” for the Freedom party.
Brussels Relief Will Be Short-Lived
Other than ability to dissolve parliament, the Austrian president is a largely symbolic position. Real power lies with the chancellor.
Hofer got close to 47% of the vote. Van der Bellen got 53% but he is a Green candidate running as an independent.
The center-left, center right, and the Greens all voted for Van der Bellen. In a four-way race, this would not have been close.
For the first time since WWII both the center-left and center-right parties were knocked out of the election.
Heinz-Christian Strache On Deck
The leader of the Freedom Party is not Hofer, but rather Heinz-Christian Strache.
The next parliamentary election is scheduled for September 2018, but the article suggests elections “widely expected to be called early”.
The Freedom Party is highly likely to come out on top in the next election given the number of parties that will field candidates.
However, Strache would still have to form a coalition unless he can get an outright majority of the votes.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
And another blow to the EXIT people
“…LONDON — An election just contested here was supposed to be a referendum on the expansion of Heathrow Airport, and only of local interest. But it turned into something far more profound: a referendum on the referendum for Britain to quit the European Union, and its results sent tremors through the Conservative government of Prime Minister Theresa May and made the Labour Party look irrelevant.
The race for a seat in Parliament was won on Thursday by the candidate of the diminished Liberal Democratic Party, which is calling for another referendum on the terms of Britain’s departure from Europe, known as “Brexit.” Its candidate, Sarah Olney, defeated Zac Goldsmith, who had held the seat representing the London borough of Richmond for the Conservatives since 2010.
It was not just that Ms. Olney won, but how. She defeated Mr. Goldsmith by about 2,000 votes out of 41,367 votes cast, after Mr. Goldsmith had a 23,000-vote margin in the previous election.
The Labour candidate drew so few votes, around 1,500, that the party was forced to forfeit a deposit of 500 pounds ($634) that is extracted from nuisance candidates and typically refunded to major parties.
The trouble for Mr. Goldsmith — and, by extension, the broader Conservative Party — was that he had been a vocal advocate for Britain leaving the European Union. But in the June referendum on whether to leave the bloc, his constituents voted to remain by about 70 percent to 30 percent.
Thursday’s contest was a by-election, a special vote used to fill vacant seats between general elections. They often turn into tools for protest voting, and this was no exception. The vote showed the deep and growing anger and anxiety within Britain about how the country should manage its exit from the bloc, under what terms and with what future relationships.
People who voted in the June referendum to remain are urging a close relationship with Europe, including access to the single market. The Remain voters say that they have the right to speak out even if they lost, and that the referendum was a strict in or out vote, without details about the future.
But those on the Leave side are angry and defensive, too. They fear that their victory will be somehow snatched away by elites, and that even Mrs. May, who favored remaining, will not follow through on leaving.
This vote also cuts her narrow majority in the House of Commons even more, raising new speculation about whether she will seek an early election to win her own mandate to lead.
The by-election became necessary after Mr. Goldsmith, who is popular in Richmond, had promised to quit if the Conservative government decided to expand Heathrow Airport with a third runway, which it did. So he resigned, hoping to pressure the government to rethink.
He decided to run again for his old seat as an independent, and the Conservatives did not even put up an opponent. But without the party’s support, he had no access to the party’s voter database.
Ms. Olney also opposed the new runway at Heathrow, as did the Labour candidate, Christian Wolmar, making moot Mr. Goldsmith’s pet issue. Instead, Ms. Olney urged voters to send a message to the government that the 48 percent of Britons who voted to Remain were not to be ignored.
“Our message is clear: We do not want a hard Brexit,” she said. “We do not want to be pulled out of the single market, and we will not let intolerance, division and fear win.”
Many who favor leaving want to get out of the alliance at all costs, a so-called hard exit, to restore complete British control over immigration and the budget. But others, like Ms. Olney, want to maintain duty-free access to the bloc, even if that means continuing to pay into the alliance’s budget or to continue to accept the free movement of labor.
The main opposition Labour Party has been ambivalent about the issue and its candidate, Mr. Wolmar, did poorly in the wealthy Richmond area. Worse, it made Labour look irrelevant in the main issue of the race.
The Liberal Democrats, by contrast, poured enormous resources into Richmond. Stung in the 2015 national elections and reduced to only eight members in Parliament, the party’s new leader, Tim Farron, saw Richmond as a chance to resurrect support.
“This was not just about a Remain versus Leave rerun,” Mr. Farron told the British Broadcasting Corporation on Friday. “This was about people trying to say to Theresa May, ‘We do not like the extreme version of Brexit outside the single market you’re taking us down.’”
The Liberal Democrats invested in an enormous get-out-the-vote operation. They had 600 activists on the ground, with another 241 people staffing a phone bank that made 13,000 calls, and knocked on 36,000 doors, according to the British news media.
The result in Richmond could signal a new beginning for the Liberal Democrats, who traditionally do well in voting for local councils. But as a columnist for The Guardian, Rafael Behr, suggested in a post on Twitter that the victory for the Liberals was like a “cup of tea in emergency shelter after flood has washed the house away. Nice, but not a new house.”
However heartened some who voted to remain are by the Richmond result, opinion polls suggest that national attitudes have not shifted much since the June vote, and have actually hardened.
But the by-election’s result unmistakably underlines the political difficulties facing Mrs. May, who has yet to develop a clear negotiating strategy for Britain’s withdrawal from Europe.
So far, she has played for time. She said that she would begin the process of withdrawal from the bloc by the end of March. By then she and the government will have to make some decisions about priorities and about what the departure means: whether to remain within the single market or the customs union, and if so, at what price? Or does control over immigration take precedence over every other consideration?
One of her difficulties is that, if she hints at a pragmatic approach to leaving, she risks upsetting the right wing of her Conservative party.
The result in Richmond also underlines the volatility of the electorate, which may reinforce Mrs. May’s natural caution, making an early election less likely for her.
Hostile elites in the MSM are spinning it as a defeat for ‘Brexit’ but Richmond is the third richest constituency in the country and was previously held by the Liberals, so its not such a surprise that the very pro-EU Liberal party won back the seat.
For now, the Green Party was only just able to win the elections ‘with a little help from their friends’ in the leftist Austrian msm. Wait and see what will happen when the alt media rise.
This result still won’t stop the inevitable collapse of the EUSSR.
No reprieve for the global insanity… except maybe this:
http://www.thegreenhead.com/imgs/xl/giant-meteor-2016-bumper-sticker-xl.jpg
Check zerohedge, they have an article about how the NGOs are bringing in the migrants from N Africa. Includes names of ships. It may be inferred that countries are becoming irrelevant and politics are a stage game.
Ya think?
Frank Zappa stated more than 40 years ago that “Politics is the entertainment department of the Military Industrial Complex.”
Most Europeans are cucks, no real news there. Le Pen is unlikely to win the French elections and even if the Germans somehow find enough spine to oust Merkel, I seriously doubt they will hand the victory to AFD. Greece, Italy, Spain are all populated by leftist brain dead / spineless idiots. The Netherlands might have a shot with Wilders, that’s about it…
Would have to totally agree.
A very compliant population.
Whomever heads the EU will control a continent of sheep.
Whoever controls the MSM controls the EU. It is that brain-dead at the moment.
Social mood does not proceed in straight lines. The important thing is that the neoliberal-Zioglobalist ebb tide will only accelerate with time.
In 20 years if you visit Vienna you’ll think you landed in Cairo.
There goes the neighborhood.
This is good result for FPO, regardless the defeat. It would also be instructive to break down the votes by the regions. I bet, Vienna skewed the results.
The main parties, that ruled Austria since the war, backed a “green” candidate because their own candidates fared so badly. What does bode for the general elections?
Exactly what happened. Urban mentality disease – the state knows best.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2016/11/29/Austria%20vote%20map.jpg
If this information is true, then thank goodness we’ve got the electoral college. Perhaps the Austrians should reconsider such a political set up for themselves? When small, condense areas speak for all, it’s never going to end well. For anyone.
No, I don’t know much about Austrian politics, other than what I see posted here. But if that image is right, that’s a wake-up call for the Austrians.
I watched CNN for election night results because CNN had better graphics. But I also learned other interesting demographic information from the enemy themselves. CNN kept mentioning it … that Democrat voters were mainly in the large urban areas filled with liberals, blacks and immigrants and in college towns. CNN kept hoping these areas of the different states would swing the election for Hillary. It appears the same urban cancer has taken root in Austria and other [former] White Christian nations.