According to the first forecasts, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) won the provincial elections in the Austrian capital Vienna after the closure of the polling stations. The mayor’s party, Michael Ludwig, could win up to 43 percent of the vote. The right-wing populist Free Party of Austria (FPÖ) suffered heavy losses in the capital, which is also one of the nine Austrian federal states.
According to ARGE’s calculations, the SPÖ won about 43 percent of the vote. The Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, led by Finance Minister Gernot Blümel until the Vienna elections, came in second.
According to ARGE, it won 19 percent of the vote. Only the Greens, who have so far ruled with the Social Democrats from Vienna City Hall, finished third. However, the forecast attributes them 12 percent of the vote, which would be a record gain in the metropolis.
The land elections for the right-wing populist FPÖ, which won only eight percent of the vote, ended in debacle. Compared to the previous elections in 2015, it probably lost up to two thirds of voters. Liberals from the NEOS will get to the Vienna Parliament with seven percent of the vote.
The fate of the candidate, led by former Vice-Chancellor and former chairman of the FPÖ Heinz-Christian Strache, is still uncertain. Now her profit is below the 5% threshold required for election. At the same time, the Vienna elections were to be the beginning of Strache’s return to big politics, from which he left last year after the corruption scandal that caused the first Kurz government to fall.
The Austrian capital has long been a stronghold of social democracy. Members of this party have been mayors of the city continuously since 1945. The metropolis is therefore often nicknamed Red Vienna. The current mayor and governor Michael Ludwig has been at the head of the city since 2018, when Michael Häupl left office after more than 23 years.
The official results of today’s elections will not be known until next week. Tickets from the correspondence vote will not start counting until Monday. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, an exceptionally large number of people voted in the Vienna election this year – over 380,000.
Apart from the mayor Ludwig, all the leaders of the candidate parties also cast their votes by correspondence. However, votes cast outside the polling station are taken into account in ARGE’s forecast. Turnout is estimated at 67 percent.
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