On Sunday, center-left independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, who was backed by the Green Party, defeated far-right Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer in Austria’s Dec. 4 presidential runoff by a 53-47 margin. After the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June and Donald Trump won the American presidential election in November, there were international fears that Hofer would prevail and become the Europe’s first far-right head of state since World War II. Fortunately, unlike the U.S., Austria is sensible enough to have an electoral system where the candidate who wins more votes gets elected, instead of using an Electoral College that can and often does elect the loser.
And Austria's election had more than a few parallels to the American presidential election. Foremost among them, we’ve seen the same recent rising tide of xenophobic right-wing populism on the upswing throughout Europe, just like in the United States. And there as here, it’s come mainly as a backlash to immigration and multiculturalism. Hofer, in fact, campaigned on a stridently Islamophobic anti-immigrant platform, a centerpiece of which was hostility to the European Union. Van der Bellen, on the other hand, advocated a pro-EU position and campaigned using the tagline “Only Together Are We Austria,” as you can see in the poster above—very reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together” slogan.
Austria uses a parliamentary system, meaning the president is mostly a figurehead, but the position is not without power. Indeed, Hofer had pledged to use the president’s authority in unprecedented ways if elected. In particular, he was eager to force early elections for parliament, the country’s true power center, because Hofer’s Freedom Party was poised to surge to first place according to recent polls. Thankfully, that potential future has now been averted.
There are other similarities as well. The far-right dominated in rural areas, working-class suburbs, and with men, while the center-left did well with women and in well-educated cities with more exposure to immigration and multiculturalism. Sound familiar? But the outcome differed from our own because Austria doesn’t give voters in more rural or non-minority working-class areas disproportionate power like our Electoral College does.
While they may have plenty of flaws of their own, Austria and practically the entire rest of the democratic world get one thing right when it comes to presidential elections: It’s simply better for democracy when the candidate who wins more votes wins the election instead of the runner-up.