Excerpt:
Austria's anti-immigration far-right triumphed Sunday in the first round of a presidential poll, in a historic defeat for the traditionally powerful governing coalition parties two years before the next scheduled general election.
Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) won 36 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed, with the candidates from the two centrist government parties failing to even make it into a second-round runoff on May 22.
"This is the beginning of a new political era," FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache said after what constitutes the best-ever result at federal level for the former party of the late Joerg Haider, calling it a "historic result".