Legislative elections were held in Austria on 29 September 2019 to elect the 27th National Council, the lower house of Austria's bicameral parliament. The snap election was called in the wake of the Ibiza affair in May, which caused the resignation of Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and the collapse of the governing coalition of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). The government subsequently lost a motion of no confidence in parliament, before ÖVP Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was replaced by non-partisan Brigitte Bierlein on an interim basis.
The conservative ÖVP achieved its best result since 2002, improving its vote share six percentage points. The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) won just 21.2%, its worst result in over a century. The FPÖ suffered a substantial loss of almost ten points. The Greens re-entered the National Council after falling out in 2017, and achieved their best ever result with 13.9% and 26 seats. NEOS improved from 2017, rising from 10 to 15 seats.
With the ÖVP in a clear position to lead the new government, it held talks with all other parties. By early November, a coalition with The Greens was seen as the most likely outcome. Negotiations continued through December, and on 1 January, ÖVP leader Kurz and Greens leader Werner Kogler announced the formation of a coalition government between their two parties. The government was sworn in on 7 January 2020 as Second Kurz government, with Sebastian Kurz returning as Chancellor and Kogler taking office as Vice Chancellor.
Background.
The 2017 legislative election was called four years into a grand coalition between the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), prompted by the demand of newly elected ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz for a snap election. Although the SPÖ won 52 seats, as it did in the 2013 election, the ÖVP and FPÖ both made large gains, increasing their strength by 15 seats to 62 and by 11 to 51, respectively, making the former the largest party at the federal level. The Peter Pilz List entered the National Council with 8 seats, while the NEOS gained one seat and the Greens lost all of their 24 seats because they failed to clear the 4% threshold of the vote, which is required to qualify for the proportional allocation of seats.
Following the election, President Alexander Van der Bellen asked Kurz to form the next government, and the ÖVP initiated exploratory talks with the other parties represented in the National Council. The ÖVP officially started coalition negotiations with the FPÖ on 25 October 2017, agreeing on a five-point roadmap. Negotiations drew towards a close in late November, and the parties announced a coalition agreement on 15 December, with the coalition government led by Kurz sworn in on 18 December.
On 4 November 2017 Peter Pilz announced that he would not take his seat, following accusations of sexual harassment. On 11 June 2018, Pilz returned to the National Council and was sworn in after charges of sexual harassment were dropped by the state prosecution. His return was made possible by the resignation of another member of the National Council, Peter Kolba, who stepped down after significant disputes within the List Pilz. The swearing-in ceremony of Pilz was met with heavy resistance. Almost all female representatives walked out of the parliament room as he was about to take the oath.
On 7 May 2018 Matthias Strolz announced that he would step down as leader of NEOS and hand over the party leadership in June, citing personal reasons and a successful period for the party since it was founded in 2012, with steady electoral gains during his term. On 23 June 2018, party delegates elected Beate Meinl-Reisinger as their new leader in a meeting that took place in Vienna.
On 20 August 2018 Maria Stern was elected new party leader of the List Pilz during a party meeting in Vienna. Participants also agreed to rename the list, for which a PR agency was hired. On 19 November 2018, the List Pilz presented their new name: "Jetzt" (or "Now", in English).
On 18 September 2018 opposition leader Christian Kern announced that he would resign as leader of the Austrian Social Democrats. Four days later, former Minister of Health Pamela Rendi-Wagner was designated as the new chairwoman of the Social Democratic Party. She was officially confirmed as party leader through a delegate vote at a party convention held on 24 November 2018. Rendi-Wagner is the first female leader of the SPÖ.
Ibiza affair and snap election announcement.
On 17 May 2019 a secretly recorded video was published of a July 2017 meeting in Ibiza, Spain, which appeared to show the then opposition politicians Heinz-Christian Strache and Johann Gudenus discussing their party's underhanded practices and intentions. In the video, both politicians appeared receptive to proposals by a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch, discussing providing the FPÖ positive news coverage in return for government contracts. Strache and Gudenus also hinted at corrupt political practices involving other wealthy donors to the FPÖ in Europe and elsewhere.
On 18 May Strache announced that he would resign as FPÖ leader and vice chancellor, with Norbert Hofer replacing him as FPÖ leader.
On 19 May Kurz tore up the coalition agreement and announced his intention to seek a snap election in September with President Alexander Van der Bellen also signalling an election early that month. Just eight days later, the Kurz government was toppled in the first successful no-confidence vote in modern Austrian history.
On 3 June Brigitte Bierlein and her independent technocratic interim government was sworn into office by President Alexander Van der Bellen. Her government consisted of 12 members, instead of the 16 in the first Kurz government.
On 12 June 2019 the election date was eventually set for 29 September with the votes of SPÖ and FPÖ, while the ÖVP was opposed, having favoured an early September poll date instead. The prevailing view was that the snap election should not be held during the summer holiday season, and that it should not coincide with state elections in Vorarlberg, to be held on 13 October 2019.
Electoral system.
The 183 members of the National Council are elected by open list proportional representation at the level of one federal constituency consisting of all of Austria, 9 state constituencies, and 39 regional constituencies. Seats in the National Council are apportioned to the regional constituencies based on the results of the most recent census. Following elections, seats are allocated to the candidates of successful parties and lists in a three-stage process: from regional constituencies to state constituencies to the federal constituency.
For parties to receive any representation in the National Council, they must either win at least one seat in a constituency directly, or clear a 4 percent national electoral threshold. Seats are distributed according to the Hare method in the first two stages, at the level of regional and state constituencies, with any remaining seats allocated using the D'Hondt method at the federal level, to ensure overall proportionality between a party's national vote share and its share of parliamentary seats. Deviations from near-perfect proportionality can nevertheless occur when a smaller party fails to clear the 4% hurdle and receives no seats, a fate the Green Party suffered in 2017. The rationale for the threshold is to discourage parties from splintering, and thereby prevent parliament from fragmenting into numerous small parties, which would complicate coalition formation in the first instance, and would undermine their stability once they are formed.
In addition to voting for a political party, voters may cast three preferential votes for specific candidates of that party, but are not required to do so. These additional votes do not affect the proportional allocation based on the vote for the party or list, but can change the rank order of candidates on a party's lists at the federal, state, and regional level. The threshold to increase the position of a candidate on a federal party list is 7 percent, compared to 10 percent at the state level, and 14 percent at the regional level. The names of candidates on regional party lists are printed on the ballot and can be marked with an "x" to indicate the voter's preference. Preference votes for candidates on party lists at the state and federal level, however, must be written in by the voter, either by writing the name or the rank number of the candidate in a blank spot provided for that purpose. Austria still uses paper ballots, rather than electronic voting machines or online voting. Because the names of candidates on the regional lists are printed on the ballot, and because more parties and lists compete today than was the case in earlier decades of the Second Republic, today's ballots are much larger in size than was the case before the introduction of preferential voting. Voting by placing an "x" in the circle provided next to party name on the top of the ballot, or marking a specific candidate name on the regional list of a party at the bottom, is the most common method, but other markings other than "x" are also allowed. A voter may not cross party-lines to cast a preference vote for a candidate of another party, however. Such preference votes are invalid.
Date.
Per Article 26 and 27 of the Federal Constitutional Law, the National Council must be convened by the President no later than 30 days after the most recent election. The standard duration of the legislative period of the National Council is five years, by the end of which it must be renewed through an election on a Sunday or a public holiday. Because the inaugural meeting of the 26th National Council took place on 9 November 2017, as determined by President Alexander Van der Bellen, the latest date on which the next legislative election could have been held would be 6 November 2022.
Contesting parties.
The table below lists parties represented in the 26th National Council.
Ballot access requirements.
In order to contest the election nationwide, a party (or list) must have the support of three members of parliament or collect 2,600 valid signatures from eligible voters ahead of the elections.
Parties may contest the election in individual states only, if they so chose. To do so, they must submit a minimum number of voter signatures that varies by state as follows:
For the 2019 elections, parties had less than a month (9 July and 2 August) to collect signatures. The state and federal election commissions then validated the signatures and announced the list of parties that qualified.
Parties that collected enough signatures.
In addition to the parties already represented in the National Council, eight parties collected enough signatures to be placed on the ballot. Three of these were cleared to be on the ballot in all states, five of them only in some.
Failed to achieve ballot access.
Another eight parties or lists sought ballot access, but failed to collect enough signatures to meet the 2 August 2019 deadline.
Results.
Preference votes.
Alongside votes for a party, voters were able to cast a preferential votes for a candidate on the party list. The ten candidates with the most preferential votes on a federal level were as follows:
Government formation.
Although the ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz won a large plurality, it came up 21 seats short of a majority and thus needed the support of a junior partner in order to return Kurz to the chancellorship. Several coalition options were mathematically possible based on the distribution of parliamentary seats among the other parties, which reflected their respective shares of the vote. The Green Party achieved their best electoral results ever, in part at the expense of the SPÖ, and was viewed as a potentially viable coalition partner, although such a conservative-green alliance would have unprecedented at the national level in Austria and would have required compromise on policy positions by both sides.
Exploratory coalition talks.
President Van der Bellen met with Kurz on Monday, 7 October 2019 to charge him with the task of forming a new government. Kurz had committed himself to hold talks with all parties. The Green Party leadership had already voted in favor of exploratory talks, and had avoided setting preconditions, though as of 29 September, a coalition with the ÖVP was backed by only 1/3 of Green party members. The Green Party leader, Werner Kogler, is a veteran of coalition talks with the ÖVP that failed on