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Austria’s centrist president Alexander Van der Bellen is on track to return to workplace for a second time period, preliminary election outcomes indicated on Sunday night, as voters endorsed his marketing campaign’s promise of stability after 5 years of political upheaval.
An extrapolation of counted ballots after polls closed at 5pm Sunday night indicated Van der Bellen had secured 56.3 per cent of the nationwide vote, leaving him virtually sure to win the primary spherical. Pollsters don’t count on a significant variation within the consequence earlier than a proper declaration within the coming hours.
Van der Bellen, 78, stood as an impartial candidate, however he was beforehand a distinguished politician in Austria’s Inexperienced Social gathering, on the ticket of which he was first elected in 2016.
His marketing campaign was exceptional for its low-key tenor, regardless of a tense political and financial backdrop in Austria, the place a fragile and unpopular coalition conservative-green authorities is navigating the nation via a spiralling vitality and price of residing disaster.
Austria’s long-established rightwing populist Freedom Social gathering was the one different mainstream celebration to subject a candidate within the election.
Walther Rosenkranz — who stood on an anti-establishment platform that included opposition to sanctions in opposition to Russia — is about to return in second place, with just below 18 per cent of votes anticipated to have been solid in his favour.
“It is a nice success,” Freedom Social gathering deputy parliamentary faction chief Dagmar Belakowitsch instructed Der Normal newspaper after the primary provisional consequence was revealed at 5pm in Vienna. “It was a really tough recreation in opposition to an incumbent president. It might have been good to have [had] a runoff election. However that objective was solely narrowly missed.”
The dearth of opposition from Austria’s political mainstream “arguably sealed the deal from day one,” in favour of Van der Bellen mentioned Marcus How, head of study at VE Perception, a political threat consultancy.
Regardless of Van der Bellen’s re-election on a ticket that promised probity and transparency in authorities, the marketing campaign had been “unhealthy for democratic life in Austria” mentioned How.
“Van der Bellen [ran] a low-energy, choreographed marketing campaign . . . this allowed a lot of the discourse to be dominated by crude populist narratives on overseas and safety coverage, EU sanctions of Russia and the provisions of the structure,” he mentioned.
Van der Bellen declined to participate in tv debates, leaving the Freedom Social gathering’s Rosenkranz to politically dominate panel discussions with the 5 different marginal candidates.
Whereas the Austrian presidency is a principally ceremonial function, the workplace can also be vested with vital constitutional tasks which were put to the check in recent times.
In his first six yr time period, Van der Bellen presided over six totally different chancellors in seven administrations that included Sebastian Kurz, as soon as considered the wunderkind of European conservative politics, serving twice.
Kurz’s travails because the chief of the conservative Austrian Folks’s Social gathering proceed to solid a protracted shadow over Austrian politics. For supporters the younger chancellor was a robust communicator whose political nous promised radical modifications in Austria’s sclerotic political scene. For detractors his aggressive stage administration of the media and ruthlessness masked endemic political corruption and cronyism.
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