[PapaBear3625]

Very close but the “far-right, xenophobic, racist” Hofer is in the lead by 50.4% vs 49.6% for the “moderate, sensible, environmentally friendly” van der Bellen. All the media is telling us that it is too close to call and in the end the Good Green may win.

I'm thinking that, just like US Dems always seem to find just enough votes to prevail in every "close" race, a similar dynamic will hold here.

Still, having an anti-immigrant party coming close to a majority in Austria will be a scare to the EU Establishment.

[ScaniaBoy]

The counting is over for today. With all the votes given at the polling stations counted Hofer (FPÖ) has 52% and van der Bellen (Green and all the others) has 48%. That is a lead by 144 000 votes. However, no postal votes have been counted. A total of 880 000 postal vote forms were handed out. How many have been received is not known. In principle, if all postal vote forms are returned van der Bellen needs 58% of those to win. The postal votes will be counted tomorrow.
(Of course the less postal votes are returned the higher percentage van der Bellen will need. Now what did Stalin say about who counted the votes?)