Austria poll candidates at 50-50

VIENNA. — Nearly final results for Austria’s presidential election yesterday showed a right-wing politician neck-to-neck race with a challenger whose views stand in direct opposition to his rival’s anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic message.

With 97 percent of the vote counted, right-winger Norbert Hofer and Alexander Van der Bellen, a Greens politician running as an independent, each had 50 percent support.

With the SORA polling institute putting the margin of error in the poll results at 0,8 percent percent, the final outcome remained unclear more than three hours after polls closed.

Absentee ballots, which will be counted by today, could be decisive.

Candidates backed by the dominant Social Democratic and centrist People’s Party were eliminated in last month’s first round, which means neither party would hold the presidency for the first time since the end of the war. That reflects disillusionment with the status quo and their approach to the migrant crisis and other issues. – AP