{"id":25539,"date":"2016-05-23T22:32:03","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T22:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/independent-candidate-wins-austrian-presidential\/"},"modified":"2016-05-23T22:31:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T22:31:52","slug":"independent-candidate-wins-austrian-presidential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/independent-candidate-wins-austrian-presidential\/","title":{"rendered":"Independent candidate wins Austrian presidential polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Alexander van der Bellen beats far-right leader Norbert Hofer of Freedom Party in knife-edge election.}<\/p>\n<p>Independent candidate Alexander van der Bellen has won Austria&#8217;s presidential election after far-right leader Norbert Hofer conceded defeat.<\/p>\n<p>The interior minister said on Monday that Alexander Van der Bellen won 50.3 percent of the vote in Sunday&#8217;s knife-edge election, compared to 49.7 percent for Hofer, presented as the friendly and moderate face of the anti-immigration, populist Freedom Party (FPOe).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course I am sad,&#8221; Hofer said on Facebook as he conceded defeat. &#8220;I would have loved to have looked after this wonderful country for you as president.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Please don&#8217;t be disheartened. The effort in this election campaign is not wasted, but is an investment for the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Preliminary results late on Sunday had put Hofer 3.8 percentage points ahead in the runoff for the largely ceremonial but bitterly fought-over post of Austrian head of state, but postal ballots, which account for about 12 percent of eligible votes, swayed the result in Van der Bellen&#8217;s favour.<\/p>\n<p>A record 700,000 postal ballots were counted during Monday, dramatically putting Van der Bellen ahead by just over 31,000 votes in the final tally.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12406 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/e4c2c22b038d431eaeee6592e2198a6a_18.jpg\" alt=\"Hofer, right, of the Freedom Party, conceded defeat to Van der Bellen, left, on a Facebook post on Monday\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Alexander van der Bellen beats far-right leader Norbert Hofer of Freedom Party in knife-edge election.} Independent candidate Alexander van der Bellen has won Austria&#8217;s presidential election after far-right leader Norbert Hofer conceded defeat. The interior minister said on Monday that Alexander Van der Bellen won 50.3 percent of the vote in Sunday&#8217;s knife-edge election, compared [&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-25539","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\/25539","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=25539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25539"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25539"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}