{"id":25516,"date":"2016-05-23T01:57:45","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T01:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/austria-presidential-election-too-close-to-call\/"},"modified":"2016-05-23T01:57:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T01:57:32","slug":"austria-presidential-election-too-close-to-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/austria-presidential-election-too-close-to-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Austria presidential election too close to call"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Postal ballots will determine whether anti-immigration candidate will become EU&#8217;s first far-right head of state.}<\/p>\n<p>Austria&#8217;s presidential election was too close to call on Sunday, meaning postal ballots were set to determine whether an anti-immigration candidate would become the European Union&#8217;s first far-right head of state.<\/p>\n<p>A victory for Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer would be a landmark triumph for parties across Europe that have capitalised on Europe&#8217;s migration crisis and widespread dissatisfaction with traditional parties of power.<\/p>\n<p>It would be all the more remarkable for being in a prosperous country with low unemployment, where two centrist parties have dominated since it emerged shattered from World War II after its annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The sovereign has spoken,&#8221; Hofer&#8217;s opponent, former Greens leader Alexander Van der Bellen, told broadcaster ORF. &#8220;What exactly it has said &#8211; Hofer or Van der Bellen &#8211; we will know tomorrow afternoon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A projection by the SORA institute for broadcaster ORF, based on 100 percent of votes cast in polling stations and an estimate of the outcome of postal voting, showed a statistical dead heat on 50 percent each. The margin of error was 0.7 percentage point.<\/p>\n<p>The provisional result from the Interior Ministry, which did not include postal ballots, showed Hofer ahead with 51.9 percent to van der Bellen&#8217;s 48.1 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Postal votes will not be counted until Monday and their exact number is not known. They tend to be used by the more highly educated, a spokesman for SORA said, a group among which 72-year-old Van der Bellen has greater support.<\/p>\n<p>Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said he expected there would be about 750,000 postal ballots, roughly 12 percent of Austria&#8217;s 6.4 million eligible voters.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12389 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/e52b4acacf694c6e98e99f6fcfb20351_18.jpg\" alt=\"Hofer, left, is facing Bellen, right, in the tight presidential race \" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Postal ballots will determine whether anti-immigration candidate will become EU&#8217;s first far-right head of state.} Austria&#8217;s presidential election was too close to call on Sunday, meaning postal ballots were set to determine whether an anti-immigration candidate would become the European Union&#8217;s first far-right head of state. A victory for Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25516"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25516"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}