Austria's presidential election to be decided by mail-in ballots


Austria's presidential election will come down to the 750,000 mail-in ballots left to be counted.
The country's interior minister said after counting the ballots cast at polling stations on Sunday, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party has a slight edge over independent Alexander Van der Bellen, with 51.9 percent of the vote compared to 48.1 percent. The mail-in ballots account for 12 percent of Austria's 6.4 million voters, and they will be counted Monday.
If elected, Hofer would be the first far-right head of state in the European Union, BBC News reports. Last year, 90,000 people claimed asylum in Austria, the equivalent of 1 percent of the country's population, and the Freedom Party ran an anti-immigration campaign. In Austria, the presidency is primarily a ceremonial post.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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