In the end, Norbert Hofer came up 31,026 votes short of Making Austria Great Again. The Freedom Party of Austria’s presidential candidate lost to Alexander Van der Bellen, a Green party economist, by a margin narrower than the Brenner Pass. Just last night Hofer was leading by 144,006 votes, but after all the absentee ballots were tallied (it takes time to count the votes of every single lonely goatherders), it was Van der Bellen who was hearing the sound of music. (Okay, I’ll stop.)
Not that the role of president in Austria is all that important (the head of the coalition government is the chancellor). But a victory by the right-wing FPÖ would have clearly sent a signal to Brussels that the Austrian people have had enough—enough with the bailouts and, most especially, enough with the influx of refugees. (It is no small irony that the country that first removed barriers separating it from then-Communist Hungary, leading to the Velvet Revolution, is now contemplating the setting up of barriers on its southern border with Italy, a country facing its own refugee crisis.)
Are there similarities between the Austrian and American elections? In the Washington Post, Anthony Faiola lists Hofer as one of the “Donald Trumps of Europe.” According to Die Presse, the Hofer voter was predominantly male (60 percent) and working class. Van der Bellen’s supporters were largely female (60 percent) and came from the big cities. Van der Bellen took the youth vote (54 percent) while Hofer just barely secured those between 30 and 59 years old (52 percent). The final result was Van der Bellen with 50.4 percent of the total vote and Hofer with 49.6. It was by far the country’s closest election.
Despite the result, that Austria was only a few votes away from electing to the presidency a member of Jörg Haider’s old party does not bode well for the European Union’s upcoming hurdles, such as the Brexit vote. (The late Haider, as mentioned previously by Christopher Caldwell, once praised the honor of Waffen SS men.)
