Italy's Renzi to resign after losing reforms referendum

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced Sunday that he will resign after conceding defeat in a referendum on his proposed constitutional changes.

“Good luck to us all,” Renzi told reporters after saying he will submit his resignation to the Italian president after 2½ years in office. “I lost and the post that gets eliminated is mine.”

Renzi conceded after exit polls showed the referendum losing by about 60% to 40% in Sunday's vote, the Associated Press reported.

The Italian premier had put his job on the line if the  measure — aimed at simplifying how laws are passed and reducing bureaucracy — fails. As a result, the referendum was seen as a vote on Renzi, the country's youngest premier. The yes-or-no vote was also viewed as an outlet for growing anti-establishment, populist sentiment in Europe, especially after Donald Trump’s win in the United States last month and the Brexit vote in Britain last summer.

Italian opposition leader Matteo Salvini, of the anti-immigrant Northern League, called Sunday's vote a “victory of the people against the strong powers of three-quarters of the world,” the AP said.

The Five Star Movement, a populist group led by former comedian Beppe Grillo, who has expressed admiration for Trump, also opposed the proposed constitutional changes, saying they don't go far enough.

Yet in Austria's presidential election Sunday, left-leaning Alexander Van der Bellen easily defeated far-right populist Norbert Hofer in a victory welcomed as a blow to the global nationalist revolt in the U.S. and Europe.

Austria's outcome prompted congratulations by mainstream politicians in Europe who feared that a win by the far-right could trigger a domino effect in next year's key elections in France, Germany and The Netherlands.

French President François Hollande said Austrians “made the choice of Europe, and openness.”

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who the center-left Social Democrats, told the Bild newspaper that “a load has been taken off the mind of all of Europe.” He called Austria's result “a clear victory for good sense against right-wing populism.”

“What happens here today has relevance for all of Europe,” Van der Bellen said as he cast his ballot, later noting that his win showed most voters backed his message of “freedom, equality, solidarity,” the Associated Press reported.

Hofer conceded in a Facebook posting, congratulating Van der Bellen and asking all Austrians to pull together. "I am infinitely sad that it didn't work out," he said.

With all the votes counted except for absentee ballots, Van der Bellen had 51.68% to Hofer's 48.32%. Pollsters predicted a final result of 53.3% to 46.7% in favor of Van der Bellen once the approximately 500,000 absentee ballots were tallied, according to the AP.

The president's role in Austria is largely ceremonial, though a win by Hofer — whose Euro-skeptic and anti-immigration Freedom Party was founded by a former Nazi general — would have made him Europe's first far-right head of state since World War II.

Austria was the first European Union nation to hold a presidential election since Trump's surprise victory last month in the U.S.

Sunday’s election was a rerun from May. Hofer narrowly lost to Van der Bellen in that vote, but the outcome was canceled after an Austrian court ruled there were ballot irregularities.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard