Austria far-right 'narrowly loses poll, electing Van der Bellen president'

Norbert Hofer would have been a disaster.

Damn... this is only going to get worse, too.

They see what a nut Trump is, and they won't follow suit, despite the immigration and economic issues that Europe faces.

Europe has had right populist or nationalist political movements on the upswing for quite some time. Until fairly recently, the mainstream of the US political scene was entirely internationalist and "liberal," in the way that this word might be understood globally.

now. I sometimes wonder if Donald went to school on the European far-right. In reality I doubt he does that much political thinking.

Most politics are local, and in Austria it was a narrow split between those frightened by the influx of Syrian refugees and those who wanted a more inclusive engaged Austria.

I doubt that Trump has anything to do with it, except that both Europe and America have their far-right pseudo-populist movements. And have for some time. E.g. the worrying influence of the LePen party in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, and some scary right-wingers in Poland and Hungary. In Austria itself, the late Jorg Haider had a great deal of influence 15 years ago and his party was for a while in the governing coalition.

In America, people from Joe McCarthy to George Wallace to Jesse Helms have had terrifying influence over the years, though admittedly none of these was a main-party nominee for the presidency.

While both Trump and Hofer are anti-immigrant, they are mainly preoccupied with different groups: Mexicans in the former case; Syrian refugees in the latter.

the rest of the World pays as much attention to their politics as they do. It's not the first time I've seen Trump's influence being blamed on something completely unrelated.


The fear with Hofer is that he's keeping his powder dry for the next election when executive power is being voted on.

Left-leaning candidate wins Austria presidency in tight race

George Jahn, Associated Press

Updated 6:50 pm, Monday, May 23, 2016

VIENNA (AP) — A pro-European Union candidate eked out a victory Monday over a right-wing, anti-migrant rival to become Austria's next president, in a tight contest viewed Europe-wide as a proxy fight pitting the continent's political center against its growingly strong populist and anti-establishment movements.

European mainstream parties joined Austrian supporters of Alexander Van der Bellen in congratulating him on his victory over Norbert Hofer, with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier declaring. "All of Europe is now breathing more easily."

But with less than a percentage point separating the two, Hofer's Freedom Party and its allies across Europe also had reason to celebrate what they cast as a major political surge by one of their own.

Hofer had been narrowly ahead of Van der Bellen, a Greens politician running as an independent, after the counting of votes directly cast on Sunday. But around 700,000 absentee ballots still remained to be tallied Monday, and those numbers swung the victory to Van der Bellen.

More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Austria-Tight-presidential-election-reveals-a-7939373.php