nydwracu niþgrim, nihtbealwa mæst

Alexander van der Bellen, a nominally independent candidate backed by the Green Party, recently defeated Norbert Hofer of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) in the second and final round of the election for the mostly ceremonial office (think ‘elected temporary constitutional monarch’) of the Austrian presidency.

Herr Doktor van der Bellen, a self-described “Flüchtlingskind” (child of refugees), is in fact the son of aristocrats: his grandfather, Alexander von der Bellen, fled Russia for Estonia in 1919 and changed his surname as was required by Estonian law at the time, and his father, Alexander van der Bellen, fled Estonia for Austria in 1941. According to a profile of the politician in Die Zeit, his parents “wollten bei mir alles vermeiden, das darauf hinweist, dass wir Flüchtlinge sind”—wanted him to avoid any sign that the family were refugees; so he assimilated, and now doesn’t speak Russian. The expectation of assimilation was still allowed back then.

Van der Bellen eventually became a professor of economics, joined the Social Democrats, switched to the Green Party in 1994, and left the Greens in 2008, but retained their backing. (In 2007, the Green Party’s youth wing released posters urging Austrians to use the Austrian flag to pick up their dogs’ feces, with the caption, “Anyone who loves Austria must be shit!”) After the other candidates were eliminated in the first round of the election, van der Bellen, a pusher of mass immigration and a “United States of Europe”, ran as the anti-Hofer candidate, campaigning against the “populist” FPÖ.

You can guess what the demographic breakdown of the vote looks like:

Hofer won rural areas; van der Bellen won cities.

University graduates voted 81% for van der Bellen.

Blue-collar workers voted 86% for Hofer.

Hofer won among men; van der Bellen won among women.