Austria Avoids Shift Towards Far-Right

Austrian voters elected their twelfth president, Alexander Van der Bellen, on December 4 with approximately 53 percent of the electoral votes. The country faced two strongly contrasting presidential candidates in its third presidential election this year, which featured Van der Bellen from the Green Party and Norbert Hofer from the Freedom Party. The two candidates often clashed over opposing visions for the country’s future in the European Union, as well as its stance on immigration and national security.

Austrian voters headed to the polls on December 4 after elections held in May were annulled because of vote-counting irregularities, and the October elections were subsequently postponed due problems with invalid postal ballots– the glue on the ballot envelopes had become unstuck.

Earlier polls in May showed that the country favored Hofer’s strong nationalist stances. Like many right-wing European parties such as the National Front in France, Hofer supported a potential exit from the European Union. Only a year ago, he proposed a referendum to permanently leave the EU. He also took a firm stance on immigration and national security and regularly warned voters of the danger of the Islamization of Europe. However, according to exit poll breakdowns, 70,000 voters who picked Hofer in May's annulled vote chose Van der Bellen in the December election.

Although many voters praised Hofer’s defeat and expressed joy that another anti-establishment populist movement had not taken over their country’s politics, Hofer declared shortly after the election that “a sleeping bear has been awakened.” Hofer emphasized that the Freedom Party would not accept defeat so easily and that it already had its sights firmly set on legislative elections set in 2017. With the party’s already high approval ratings, a future victory for the Freedom Party does not seem unlikely. In the meantime, however, van der Bellen promised in his acceptance speech to be an “open-minded, a liberal-minded and first of all a pro-European federal president of the Republic of Austria."

Sunday’s election results do not dismiss Austria’s apparent shift towards the right wing, nor do they mean that future victories for the Freedom Party are improbable. However, Van der Bellen’s victory was a sigh of relief for many voters, as they believe Austria avoided the right-wing populist shift recently characteristic of many other Western countries.