Final Results of Austria Presidential Election Expected Monday Evening

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The postal votes constitute almost 14 percent of total Austrian votes.

“We expect them [the final results] between five and seven in the evening [local time, GMT 15:00-17:00],” Alexander Marakovits said.

On Sunday, Austria held the second round of the presidential elections. According to preliminary results, announced late on Sunday, Norbert Hofer from the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), got some 51.9 percent of the votes, while his rival — Alexander Van der Bellen, an independent candidate, backed by the Green Party, secured 48.1 percent of the votes. Some 900,000 postal votes are yet to be counted.

During his election campaign, Hofer has sharply criticized the EU-Turkey deal aimed at tackling the migrant flow. He has called for further limits to be put on migrant numbers and stricter rules for asylum seekers as well as for the two-party system that has dominated Austrian politics for the past several decades to be broken up.

Hofer's performance in April's first round of elections, when he finished on 35 percent beating five other contenders, was the most successful result ever achieved by a candidate from his far-right FPO party in a national election and a real shock for his opponents.