News Analysis: Austrian right wing's historic triumph signals more uncertainty

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) celebrated its historic victory in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday.It might indicate more uncertainty ahead in the European country.

FPO's best previous national showing was in the 1996 elections with more than 27 percent support, but on Sunday, the party's candidate Norbert Hofer won over 35 percent of the votes in the first round of presidential race, challenging the mainstream parties' coalition in Austria's political power structure.

The coalition is currently being criticized by the public for failing to resolve the refugee crisis, as well as key economic issues.

It's also the first time since 1945 Austria will not elect a president from either the the Social Democratic Party (SPO) or their center-right coalition partner,the People's Party.

The current ruling parties candidates, SPO's Rudolf Hundstorfer and OVP's Andreas Khol, only got 11.28 and 11.12 percent of votes respectively.

According to the final poll, more voters in the Austrian states of Burgenland and Salzburg, which have witnessed the influx of refugees, chose to vote for the anti-migrant FPO. In Burgenland, Hofer received 41.9 percent support, the highest of the Austrian states.

The refugee crisis seems to be a burden to the country which no longer enjoys a low jobless rate, has slow economic growth (less than 1.0 percent), and a high cost of refugee resettlement.

Since last summer, the central European country with 8.6 million population has received around 100,000 refugees.

Although the concerns surrounding the refugee crisis seem to have eased after countries introduced border controls in the last months, people are still worried about the possible next wave of refugees.

The current ruling coalition has also been accused of lacking flexibility in key economy policy reform areas, like taxes, education, pensions, and there is no effective reform measures to promote growth for employment.

In March 2015, it launched a 4.9-billion-euro (5.5 billion U.S. dollar) tax reform, the only strong reform measure to boost the economy.

From France, Germany to Britain, Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant politicians lauded the victory of Austria's FPO.

The FPO believes Austria needs a tougher migrant policy to secure the nation, focusing more on Austria. It's still hard to say the win of the right-wing party would trigger a political map change in Austria, or even in Europe, but the European right gets a boost from the Austrian FPO victory.

To become president, Hofer still needs to beat his only rival Alexander van der Bellen in a run-off election on May 22. Endit