Austria has elected a former leader of the Green Party to be its next president.
The race was too close to call with many pundits predicting that Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer would become the first elected head of state in the EU from the anti/immigrant far right.
By the highly narrow margin of just 0.6%, Alexander van der Bellen won the post after receiving the confidence of 50.3% of electors compared to 49.7% for Norbert Hofer.
As late as Sunday night after the vote, projected results showed something like a 50/50 split.
The deciding factor is reported to have been some 750,000 valid postal votes which were counted on Monday and added to the total.
The first round of voting on 24 April eliminated candidates from the Social Democrats and their centre-right coalition partners the People’s Party. Their 11% of the vote shunted them into fourth and fifth places. These parties had dominated Austrian politics since 1945.
