Austria Presidential Hopeful Says His Party’s Popularity to Help Win Elections

Austrian presidential candidate Norbert Hofer from the right-wing Freedom Party (FPO) told Sputnik that he and his party enjoy large public support, however, it is too close to tell who wins the upcoming reelections.

VIENNA (Sputnik) — The rerun of the presidential elections was announced after Austria's Constitutional Court ruled in July that ballots and voting results had been handled improperly and annulled the results of the May 22 second round, upon which independent candidate Van der Bellen was declared winner, beating Freedom Party (FRO) candidate Norbert Hofer by just 31,000 votes.

"When we started in January with the campaign, I was at about 8 percent, there was a lot of catching up to do. In the second round I achieved almost 50 percent and it is hard to predict. It will be interesting to see if we still can catch up more another couple of percentage points to win the election. For the federal presidential campaign it is always a question of personality. We have one big advantage as the Freedom Party is leading the polls at the moment," FPO candidate said.

On September 12, Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said that the country’s authorities had decided to postpone the presidential elections rerun from October 2 to December 4.