VIENNA: Austria’s anti-immigration far-right triumphed Sunday in the first round of presidential elections, dealing a rude wake-up call to Vienna’s cosy political establishment two years before the next scheduled general election.

Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) won 35.3 of the vote, projections showed, while candidates from the two governing parties failing to even make it into a second-round runoff on May 22, projections showed.

“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, SS-admiring Joerg Haider.

“One thing has become clear here, a huge and massive dissatisfaction with the government... I am convinced that as president, Norbert Hofer, will act as protector of the Austrian people,” he said.

The result means that for the first time since 1945, Austria will not have a president backed by either Chancellor Werner Faymann’s Social Democrats (SPOe) or their centre-right coalition partners the People’s Party (OeVP).

Van der Bellen, who will likely pose Hofer a stiff challenge on May 22, has said he would refuse to swear in Strache as chancellor in 2018 if his party comes first in elections then.