Norbert Hofer of Freedom party takes 36% of the vote as candidates from the two governing parties fail to make runoff

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Austria’s government was licking its wounds after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in presidential elections, dealing a major blow to a political establishment seen by voters as out of touch and ineffectual.



According to preliminary results, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom party came a clear first with 36% of the vote in the first round of elections for the largely, but not entirely, ceremonial post of head of state.

Candidates from the two ruling centrist parties, which have effectively run Austria since the end of the second world war, failed to even make it into a runoff on 22 May, coming fourth and fifth each with 11% of the vote.

The result means that for the first time since 1945, Austria will not have a president backed by either Chancellor Werner Faymann’s Social Democrats or their centre-right coalition partners, the People’s party.

Having a president in the Habsburg dynasty’s former palace in Vienna not from either of the two main parties could shake up the traditionally staid and consensus-driven world of Austrian politics.

“This is the beginning of a new political era,” the Freedom party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, said after what constituted the best result at federal level for the former party of the late Joerg Haider, calling it “historic”.

The Oesterreich tabloid described Hofer’s victory as a “tsunami that has turned our political landscape upside down”.

Hofer is a “a kind, nice, protest politician who wraps the FPOe’s [Freedom party’s] brutal declarations against refugees in soft language”.

Faymann said on Sunday the result was a “clear warning to the government that we have to work together more strongly”. He said, however, that his party would not make any personnel changes – including with regard to his own position.

Facing Hofer on 22 May is likely to be Alexander van der Bellen, backed by the Greens, who garnered 20%, ahead of third-place independent candidate, Irmgard Griss, who won 18.5%.

The only candidate who fared worse than the main parties’ candidates was Richard Lugner, an 83-year-old construction magnate and socialite married to a former Playboy model 57 years his junior, who won just over 2%.

The rise of fringe politicians has been mirrored across Europe, including in Spain, Britain and Germany, and also in the US with the populist messages of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front, who hopes to become president next year, tweeted her congratulations to the Freedom party for its “magnificent result”. “Bravo to the Austrian people,” she said.

Last year, Austria received 90,000 asylum requests, the second highest in Europe on a per capita basis, and Faymann’s government has taken a firmer line on immigration in recent weeks. But this has not stopped support for the Freedom party surging. Recent opinion polls put the party in first place with more than 30% of voter intentions ahead of the next scheduled general elections in 2018.

Support for the two main parties has been sliding for years and in the last general election in 2013 they only just garnered enough support to re-form their grand coalition.



Austria’s traditionally strong economy has also faltered of late and it no longer has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union. Faymann’s coalition, in power since 2008, has struggled to agree structural reforms.

David Pfarrhofer from the Market polling institute said Sunday’s result showed that the traditional parties could not continue “messing around” if they want to cling on to power.

“It’s not so much about personalities but about issues … Something needs to change if the [the two main parties] want to avoid another debacle like this,” Pfarrhofer told AFP.

Reinhold Mitterlehner, head of the People’s party, appeared to agree, saying late on Sunday after the “disappointing” result that it was time to “relaunch” the coalition.