Hofer had initially said Austria could follow Britain's vote to leave the EU with one of its own within a year. Although he quickly backed away from that suggestion, his opponent Alexander Van der Bellen has cited it as proof Hofer is in favour of "Oexit", an Austrian version of Brexit. In Thursday's clash, Van der Bellen produced a picture of his dead father to denounce an accusation by a senior figure in Hofer's Freedom Party that his father was a Nazi. In May, the 760,000 postal ballots swung the election in Van der Bellen's favour, giving him a margin of victory of just 31,000 votes, or 0.7 percentage points. In Austria, special ballots used for postal voting can also be cast in polling stations, making the number of postal ballots hard to predict.

Source: The Star December 02, 2016 16:19 UTC