“Of course I’m sad today”, Hofer said on Facebook.
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Austrian political and religious leaders have called on the newly-elected president Alexander Van der Bellen to make efforts to unite the country following a closest-ever presidential election race that concluded Monday.
He added: “Please don’t be disheartened”.
The two were separated by just 31,000 votes out of more than 4.6 million ballots cast after finishing neck and neck in Sunday’s elections, when Van der Bellen collected 48.1% of direct votes and Hofer 51.9%.
Projected results late on Sunday put both Hofer, presented as the friendly and moderate face of the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), and Alexander van der Bellen, former head of the Greens, neck-and-neck on 50 percent.
The right-wing candidate in the presidential election has acknowledged defeat to a left-leaning rival, in a social media post thanking his backers for their support.
In nine out of Austria’s 10 main cities Van der Bellen came top, whereas Hofer dominated the rural areas, the Austrian broadcaster ORF reported (in German). Manual workers were also more likely to vote for Hofer than white-collar workers, with over 85 percent of the Freedom Party’s vote reportedly coming from the manual labor sector. In their view, van der Bellen is the radical one, and it’s a shame that he eked out the win…because he’s nicer to brown people than the neo-Nazi candidate.
The upcoming Austrian president also said he will suspend his membership of the Greens party as he prepares to take over the presidency on July 8.
Striking a more optimistic note, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said the result is “a clear sign that Europe is beginning to realize that hate and fear politics are not the answer to the many challenges we are facing as a continent”.
Meanwhile Mr Hofer has vowed to dismiss Austria’s current coalition government -consisting of the Social Democrats and People’s Party – should they not do a better job.
Norbert Hofer candidate for Austria’s Presidency for Austria’s Freedom Party, FPOE, gestures during an after presidential election party in Vienna, Austria, Sunday, May 22, 2016.
“People are dissatisfied with the traditional, standard political parties”, he said on arrival to an European Union foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
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The Freedom Party representative, a Eurosceptic who is against immigration, narrowly lost out to his independent challenger as 700,000 postal ballots were counted.
