Austria's Presidential Election Outcome Blow to Conservatives - Right-Wing Party

The conservative People’s Party of Austria (OVP) will be defeated in the next parliamentary elections after its senior members supported Green-backed presidential candidate Alexander Van der Bellen who shares opposite values, Roman Haider, a member of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Alpine nation on Sunday elected Van der Bellen its new president. OVP leader Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner ahead of the election supported Van der Bellen's candidacy over FPO's Norbert Hofer.

“The 'bourgeois' OVP will suffer from this result. OVP party establishment rather supported a Green former communist [Van der Bellen] than the Christian Candidate Hofer. This is a political suicide. This will lead to the OVP's loss of the next parliamentary elections,” Haider said.

According to Haider, FPO may be lost a battle for Austria’s ceremonial presidency but it is strongly positioned to win a political war as the leader of the strongest party in a ruling coalition usually becomes Chancellor.

Parliamentary election in Austria will be held before October 2018.

On Sunday, Austria held presidential election rerun after the July decision of the country's top court to overturn the results of May’s election over postal vote irregularities following an appeal from the FPO. In May, Hofer narrowly failed to be elected president in the second round after being beaten by independent candidate Van der Bellen by just 31,000 votes.

On Tuesday, the Austrian election commission counted all additional votes and officially confirmed Van der Bellen's victory in Sunday's presidential election runoff. He surpassed Hofer by nearly 350,000 votes (7.6 percent).