European liberals breathed a sigh of relief when Mr Van der Bellen won the election in May by 31,000 votes, but Austria’s supreme court annulled the result and ordered a re-run following irregularities during the vote count.

Mr Van der Bellen appeared to have increased that margin of victory on Sunday night.

Anton Mahdalik, a Freedom Party member of the Vienna city council, called the result “a great success even though we lost.”

“As a lone party against the Social Democrats, the Popular Party, the Greens, and others, and the establishment media, we still took 2.2 million votes,” he said in an interview at the party’s Vienna headquarters shortly after Mr Hofer conceded.

“We are now in pole position for the parliamentary elections in 2018,” he said.

Mr Mahdalik singled out Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, for contributing to the party’s defeat after he said on Fox News on Friday that Mr Hofer would hold a referendum on Austria leaving the European Union.

“That didn’t help us, it hindered us,” he said, saying that an overwhelming majority of Austrians support EU membership.

Casting his vote in his home town of Pinkafeld earlier on Sunday, Mr Hofer ruled out a referendum and said: “I would ask Mr Farage not to interfere in Austria’s internal affairs.”

“It is not something I want. We need to build a stronger union,” he said. He said he would oppose Turkish membership or further centralisation of the EU.