Sunday’s provisional result, not including postal ballots, showed Hofer ahead with 51.9 percent to van der Bellen’s 48.1 percent.
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Although a largely ceremonial role, an Austrian president has important powers including the ability to dismiss their cabinet.
Talking about the narrow difference, van der Bellen said, “This is a symbol”.
Previous Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations secretary general who was elected in 1986, was revealed to have served as a young man in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.
He had trailed Hofer by 14 points in the first round of the presidential election, that saw the collapse of the the two mainstream parties which had dominated the country’s post-war politics. Hofer’s party is allied with Marine Le Pen’s National Front, the Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders and the Alternative for Germany party.
“One thing is clear: there are many Norbert Hofers in the Freedom Party and we are very, very well placed for parliamentary elections – whenever they come”, Hofer’s campaign manager Herbert Kickl told public broadcaster ORF. Van der Bellen was generally supported by pro-European Union Austrians favouring humane immigration policies.
Mr. Hofer won the first round of the election in April and opinion polls gave him a comfortable lead over Mr. Van der Bellen ahead of the runoff, but also pointed to a large pool of undecided voters. The race shifted in favor of Van der Bellen after the 750,000 mail-in ballots were counted Monday.
Even if Van der Bellen emerges the victor, the election has revealed deep dissatisfaction with the two established center-right and center-left parties now ruling Austria’s government in a coalition.
Prosperous Austria has been swept up in Europe’s migrant influx, fanning concerns about rising unemployment and the erosion of the country’s high living standards.
Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache conceded his party’s defeat in a posting on his Facebook page shortly before the official announcement, saying that despite a strong campaign, Hofer had finished “millimetres” short of victory. “The hard work for this campaign hasn’t been wasted, but instead is an investment in the future”.
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Sentiment began shifting as Austria took in 90,000 asylum seekers a year ago, while neighboring Germany opened its borders to more than one million migrants, many of them fleeing Syria’s long and deadly civil war.
