Postal vote to break tie in poll:

Austria was on Monday counting hundreds of thousands of postal votes to resolve a knife-edge election that could make it the first EU country with a farright anti-immigration president.

Preliminary results late Sunday put

Norbert Hofer, presented as the friendly and moderate face of the late Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party (FPOe), 3.8 percentage points ahead in the race for the largely-ceremonial post.

But this paper-thin margin of just 144,006 votes could well be erased once around 700,000 postal votes are counted, with projections indicating that former Greens chief Alexander van der Bellen might emerge as victor in the final furlong.

A final result is expected between 1500 and 1700 GMT, said interior ministry election official Robert Stein.

FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache has already warned that a tie-breaking postal vote in favour of van der Bellen would be “very questionable”, raising fears the party could contest the final result.

Gun enthusiast Hofer, 45, has tapped into unease about the record number of asylum-seekers at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, with his typical supporters made up of poorly educated working-class men.

Around seven out of 10 working-class voters plumped for Hofer.

But this self-proclaimed “gladiator” has also toned down the FPOe’s message to appeal to voters disillusioned with the centrist parties in the current government that have dominated national politics since 1945.