Far-right candidate concedes defeat in Austrian election

[hobbits_friend]

Freedom party’s Norbert Hofer congratulates independent rival Alexander Van der Bellen and says he is ‘endlessly sad’

The rightwing populist candidate for the Austrian presidency has conceded defeat and congratulated his Green-backed independent rival on winning the election.

In a Facebook post published shortly after the first exit poll, Norbert

Comments

[ishi_chan]

I'm so relieved, I was mentally prepared for Hofer and now this!

LOL Yeah, I really expected Hofer to win, especially when I read that mail ballot requests were down 20% compared to May. I guess this was due to all the trouble surrounding them lol (me and my entire fam voted by mail again tho).

Also I'm surprised bc it seems voter participation didn't significantly go down either? I don't quite remember what the number was in may but I think it was around 70-80% as well??? Considering how annoyed and tired everyone was of this election I expected differently lolz. I did get my mom to lobby all her non-voter friends to go vote tho and apparently it worked for at least 3 people.

ETA: I looked it up and apparently voter participation went UP from 72,7% to 74%!

[hobbits_friend]

As far as I know it went slightly up (around 1,35%).
Great that she convinced people to vote! :)

[flake_sake]

I was so anxious in those last few weeks. I decided to help with the election, since so many election helpers were dragged to court last time, I figured they could need the help.

Counting the votes in my small section of innsbruck was amazing! Vdb had six times as many votes as Hofer. Not representative of course. But amazing. :) I'm so happy.

[moonshaz]

Go, Austria! I don't know a thing about Austrian politics, but the words "Far-right candidate concedes defeat" are music to my ears.

[liliaeth]

Hoping that with Trump's election, this might spook voters in other countries enough to take their voting rights serious and use it to keep further right wing parties out of office.

Let's just pray for the French elections...

[hobbits_friend]

Trump might have been an example of what happens if you don't vote or vote just as a "protest against the system".

[liliaeth]

pretty much, far too many people assume that their vote doesn't matter, or that they're just 'protesting', they rarely consider the consequences of their actions.

You'd think that people would have gotten a clue after Brexit, but well...

[sugartitty]

Thank god. Maybe people are actually learning from Brexit and Trump.

[flake_sake]

I am sooooo relieved! I was so anxious, ever since Trump won the US election, I was almost certain 2016 was just cursed and we would go down the same path.

I was helping with the election in Innsbruck, so I wouldn't sit at home anxious the whole day. We closed up at 5pm and started to count, and while we were counting, we already got the news that VdB was massively ahead in the estimations. And when I opened my envelopes there was just von VdB vote after the other. It was marvelous. In my city VdB won 62 to 38% but in my little corner of town it was 85%. I felt so at home! It was like a giant weight was lifted.

I went to the Treibhaus afterwards, where they had an election party and it was amazing. The owner had been supporting VdB all along (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7o8HNLWddE)and it was brilliant. People were so happy and relieved and joyful.

[soleiltropiques]

Belated, but this was really *wonderful* news, OP. Thanks for posting about this!!