Social Democrats win municipal elections in Vienna and far-right suffers defeat

The Social Democratic Party SPO won this Sunday the municipal elections in Vienna, reaching about 42% of the votes, while the extreme right party FPO suffered a setback, going from 30.8%, in 2015, to 7.7% .

According to the projections of the Austrian public television ORF, which include an estimate of more than 300 thousand votes by mail, the second most voted party was the popular party OVP, which doubled its 2015 result, going from 9.3% to 18.8% of the votes.

With these results, the mayor of Vienna, the Social Democrat Michael Ludwig, will continue to rule the Austrian capital, certainly in a coalition with Green environmentalists, who came in third, with 14.1% of the votes.

After a major corruption scandal last year and the expulsion of its historic leader Heinz Christian Strache, the far-right FPO suffered the biggest electoral defeat in years and moved up to fifth place, even behind the liberal Neos party, which reached 7.9%.

Strache, Austrian vice-chancellor of Austria until May 2019, presented himself in these elections with his own list, although he did not exceed the minimum threshold for entering the municipal assembly.

In a video recorded illegally in Ibiza and published last year by the press, Strache can be seen promising political favors to an alleged Russian oligarch in exchange for illegal donations to the FPO.

This scandal overthrew the then coalition government between the OVP and the FPO, in addition to triggering a strong internal crisis in the far-right party.

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