There is a clear winner in the National Council election in Austria: the right wing around FPÖ leader Kickl is in the lead for the first time. In the future, the conservative ÖVP will only be the second strongest force in parliament. The Liberals are overtaking the Greens. The official results of the election at a glance.
In Austria, the right-wing populist “Freedom Party of Austria” (FPÖ) won the National Council election. For the first time in the history of the Alpine republic, a right-wing party is entering the Austrian parliament as the strongest force. The conservative “Austrian People’s Party” (ÖVP) slipped to second place with its top candidate, the incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer.
According to the preliminary final result, the FPÖ has 29.2 percent of the votes cast, as the electoral authority announced last night. This means that the right wing under FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl will in future be the largest faction in the National Council. The ÖVP achieved 26.5 percent nationwide, which corresponds to a minus of 11 percentage points compared to the previous election in 2019.
Note: The infographics for the 2024 National Council election will be continuously updated on election evening.
The Austrian Social Democrats (SPÖ) came in third place with comparatively slight losses, but with an election result of 21.1 percent (minus 0.1 percentage points), they had to cope with their weakest result to date in a National Council election.
With 9.0 percent, the liberal NEOS party entered the National Council as the fourth-largest faction, ahead of the Greens. The Austrian Greens, who were previously in government in a coalition with the ÖVP, lost 5.9 percentage points compared to the previous election and achieved an election result of 8.0 percent. This means that the ÖVP and the Greens have to accept the biggest losses of all the parties competing compared to the previous election.
The first projections painted a fairly accurate picture early on. Shortly after the last polling stations closed at 5:00 p.m. (CEST) it was clear: the political balance of power in the Alpine republic has massively shifted as a result of this election. With almost 30 percent of the vote for the FPÖ, Austria is moving significantly to the right.
The current turquoise-green government alliance of conservatives and the Greens under Chancellor Karl Nehammer cannot be continued in its current form. According to preliminary election results, voter turnout remained below the 2019 level at 74.9 percent.
It is still unclear which party will be able to appoint the Chancellor in the future. Based on the preliminary results, in purely mathematical terms, not only the FPÖ and ÖVP would have a joint majority in the National Council, but possibly also – extremely narrowly – the ÖVP and SPÖ.
In Austria, the Federal President assigns the task of forming a government. Incumbent Alexander van der Bellen – a former Green Party politician – is constitutionally free to make his decision. The directly elected head of state is not obliged to give preference to the representative of the largest faction in the National Council. This means that the incumbent Chancellor Nehammer could have a chance again.
Together with a third coalition partner, conservatives and social democrats would have a comfortable basis for forming a government. A three-party coalition with the Liberals or the Greens would be conceivable.
The ÖVP, which has so far provided the Austrian Chancellor with Karl Nehammer, does not want to work in a government with the election winner Kickl from the right-wing FPÖ after its electoral defeat. “It was like that yesterday and it is like that today and it will still be like that tomorrow,” said ÖVP general secretary Christian Stocker in an initial reaction.
The FPÖ has already been involved in the government in Vienna several times, but so far only as a junior partner. Although the projections were confirmed and the right-wing populists will actually become the strongest force in the Austrian National Council, it remains unlikely that the staunchly right-wing party leader Kickl will be able to forge a sustainable majority. ÖVP leader Nehammer has also repeatedly ruled out working with Kickl as head of government.
Former Interior Minister Kickl took over the FPÖ leadership in 2021 after his party’s “Ibizagate” corruption scandal. With conspiracy stories about the Corona protection measures, hostile slogans against migrants and sharp criticism of the support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian war of aggression, he brought in the FPÖ’s popularity.
Kickl also made a name for himself during the election campaign by deliberately breaking taboos. He cites “remigration” as one of his political goals, in which Austrians with non-European roots whose integration is classified as inadequate should be expelled.
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl reaffirmed his party’s claim to government on election evening. “We are ready to lead a government,” said Kickl at the round of top candidates from the largest parties on Austrian television. The FPÖ is not ruling out any alliance from the outset: “Our hand is stretched out in all directions,” emphasized Kickl.
However, the polls indicated gains in votes not only for the right-wing camp, but also for the Austrian Liberals. The party “The New Austria” (NEOS) – which runs in Austria in pink for “freedom, progress and justice” – overtook the Greens and became the fourth strongest political force in Austria.
The BIER party and the KPÖ also recorded growth: However, the BIER party, the KPÖ and other small parties missed out on entering parliament. In the run-up to the election, pollsters saw chances of entering parliament primarily among the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and the comparatively young “Beer Party” (BPÖ). In particular, the BPÖ, which started as a fun and satirical party, was given good prospects in the run-up to the election of making it over the four percent hurdle that applies in Austria.
The other small Austrian parties, including the “List Madeleine Petrovic” (LMP), had little chance of overcoming the threshold clauses provided for in Austrian electoral law. The LMP is a vaccination-skeptical animal and environmental protection party that emerged from the rejection of government-ordered measures during the coronavirus pandemic
The eponymous top candidate Madeleine Petrovic sat as a member of the Green Party in the National Council from 1990 to 2003. Like the BPÖ, the LMP, which was only founded in 2022, ran for the first time in a National Council election on September 29th. According to projections, the “List” achieved at least 0.6 percent of the vote with its eponymous top candidate.
The Austrian National Council In terms of its function in the political structure of the Alpine republic, it is roughly comparable to the German Bundestag. As the second parliamentary chamber alongside the Austrian Federal Council, the National Council is the central legislative body and place of parliamentary debate.
Barrier clauses are used in Austria when counting votes in a multi-stage process. “For the National Council election, the Austrian federal territory is divided into nine state constituencies, which in turn are subdivided into a total of 39 regional constituencies,” the Interior Ministry in Vienna explained the procedure.
In order to be taken into account in the distribution of seats, parties must either exceed a certain percentage threshold in the first stage of the counting in at least one of the 39 regional constituencies or achieve more than four percent of all votes cast nationwide in a second stage. The local hurdle for the basic mandate is usually 20 to 25 percent of the votes cast locally
In the National Council elections that take place every five years, everyone is elected 183 seats in the parliamentary chamber reassigned. In principle, all Austrians aged 16 and over are invited to vote. The responsible electoral authority in the Ministry of the Interior stated the number of eligible voters as exactly 6,346,059. The number is almost 51,000 below the level in the previous 2019 election.
Review: Austria five years ago
In total, around 9.2 million people live in the Republic of Austria. By far the most populous regions are in the north and east of the Alpine republic. The capital Vienna alone has around two million inhabitants.
The federal state of Lower Austria surrounding the capital region has a population of around 1.7 million, Upper Austria further west has a population of 1.5 million, and Styria in the southeast has a total of just under 1.3 million. The remaining five Austrian federal states of Tyrol, Salzburg, Carinthia, Vorarlberg and Burgenland are home to a combined population of 2.6 million. This corresponds to a population share of 28.7 percent.
In the 2019 National Council election, the ÖVP achieved a vote share of 37.5 percent. The second strongest force was the SPÖ with 21.2 percent, followed by the FPÖ, which reached 16.2 percent. Five years ago, the Greens achieved a comparatively strong 13.9 percent. The Liberals (NEOS) were at 8.1 percent. According to the official final results at the time, voter turnout in 2019 was 75.6 percent and thus below the rate for the previous National Council election in 2017, which had reached a smooth 80.0 percent that year.
