Austria will hold national elections on 29 September. Sylvia Kritzinger previews the vote and assesses the probable makeup of the next governing coalition. She notes that a series of scandals have hit the country’s major parties, with a number of new parties, such as Team Stronach, also emerging in the Austrian party system. While the opinion polls make accurate predictions problematic, however, the chances of another grand coalition between the Social and Christian Democrats remain fairly likely

Kritzinger, Sylvia

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Austrian Parliament Building, Credit: Filip Maljković (CC-BY-SA-3.0)08/08/2013Despite turmoil in the Austrian party system, the countrymight once again be heading for another grand coalition inSeptember’s elections.blogs.lse.ac.uk /europpblog/2013/08/08/despite-turmoil-in-the-austrian-party-system-the-country-might-once-again-be-heading-for-another-grand-coalition-in-septembers-elections/Austria will hold national elections on 29 September. Sylvia Kritzinger previews the vote and assessesthe probable makeup of the next governing coalition. She notes that a series of scandals have hitthe country’s major parties, with a number of new parties, such as Team Stronach, also emerging inthe Austrian party system. While the opinion polls make accurate predictions problematic, however,the chances of another grand coalition between the Social and Christian Democrats remain fairlylikely.National Council elections are coming up in Austria on 29 September. Austria has long been knownfor its stability in electoral choices. Indeed, a duopoly of the two mainstream parties SPÖ (SocialDemocratic Party of Austria) and ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) dominated the political, economic and cultural life ofthe country until the 1990s. Today, however, the incumbent grand-coalition government of SPÖ and ÖVP facessevere challenges from the two minor opposition parties in the Austrian National Council, the Greens and the FPÖ(the radical-right Austrian Freedom Party) as well as from the newly established political party, Team Stronach.Pre-election polls conducted by the Austrian NationalElection Study (AUTNES) between April and June2013, suggest that of those voters turning out to votearound 25 per cent are going to vote for the SPÖ, 19per cent for the ÖVP, 12 per cent for the Greens, 11 percent for the FPÖ and 4 per cent for Team Stronach.Meanwhile, the BZÖ (Alliance for the Future of Austria– the party founded by Jörg Haider in 2005), whichobtained more than 10 per cent of the vote share in the2008 elections, will not make it into the NationalCouncil: the polls suggest that only around 1 per centof the Austrian electorate will vote for the party. This is1 per cent less than the predicted vote share for theCommunist Party of Austria  (KPÖ).Furthermore, around 16 per cent of Austrians havealready declared that they will probably not turn out tovote. These are alarming signs in a country which upuntil now had been characterised by high voter turnout.Most of these non-voters are SPÖ voters followed byÖVP and FPÖ voters, and hardly any Green voters. Ofthose Austrians turning out to vote it is striking toobserve that 1 out of 4 voters has not yet decidedwhom to vote for. The number of undecided votes is thus particularly high. Finally, 2 per cent of voters who turn outto vote will nevertheless vote blank in the upcoming elections. The stability in the electoral choices of Austrian votersseems to have vanished with the electorate becoming more volatile and partisan voters staying at home.‘Turmoil’ in the Austrian party system1/3Looking at the last legislative period 2008-2013, these polls seem less surprising. A series of corruption scandalsinvolving both the government parties SPÖ and ÖVP and the opposition parties FPÖ and BZÖ came to the fore.Austrians saw an unprecedented number of accusations and even convictions of high ranked politicians incorruption affairs. Several court trials are still under way and will continue during the election campaign. Moreover,the government failed to make decisions over necessary reforms resulting in a standstill in most policy areas(pensions, higher education, the health system, etc.). This deadlock is all the more surprising as the SPÖ and ÖVPwere in the unique situation of not facing any regional or local elections for a 2-year period (between autumn 2010and spring 2013). This would have given them more political leeway both towards their own electorate and theirpowerful regional party organisations – a situation both government parties could not take advantage of to theextent that on average they lost 10 per cent of their support during this period.However the hitherto greatest challenger to the two mainstream parties, the radical-right FPÖ, is also ailing followingits involvement in the corruption scandals becoming public, and particularly since a new competitor has entered thepolitical scene in September 2012: Team Stronach, a new party founded by the Austrian-Canadian billionaire FrankStronach. Until that moment, the FPÖ’s declared electoral goals were to increase its vote share substantially and tonominate the next Austrian Chancellor, namely Heinz-Christian Strache. After Frank Stronach’s announcement toenter Austrian politics, the FPÖ’s electoral forecasts decreased around 10 per cent and the goal of nominating theChancellor has disappeared.Team Stronach partly competes along the same electoral lines as the FPÖ: it is sceptical towards the Europeanintegration process, it demands to leave the euro and, finally, it denounces the Austrian political system and itspolitical class. In the past, the FPÖ ‘owned’ all these issues. Unlike the FPÖ though, Team Stronach does not tacklethe issue of immigration, which was a major FPÖ issue in the last electoral campaign. The consequences for theFPÖ could be observed in the regional elections that took place in March, April and May 2013: Team Stronachshowed that it was able to attract a great share of ‘protest voters’ and hurt, in particular, the FPÖ which experiencedsubstantial electoral losses in two of these three regional elections. Given these circumstances, the FPÖ hasalready declared that it will campaign heavily on the issues of immigration, asylum and social benefits only for‘locals’.Finally, though the Greens contributed substantially to making the different corruption scandals public, they remainin a rather static position with little to lose but also little to gain. An increase to 15 per cent of the vote share (in 2008they obtained around 10 per cent) is already considered a success by the Greens. Although the Austrian partysystem is in a phase of ‘turmoil’ with new parties entering the political scene and SPÖ, ÖVP and FPÖ underpressure, the Greens cannot make significant gains from it. In the rural areas of Austria, in particular, they have littleelectoral support.Which parties will form the next Austrian government?Given the Austrian electoral system, where seats are assigned to parties via proportional formulae, elections inAustria also involve the question of which combination of parties is most likely to form the next government. Sincethe end of World War II, grand-coalitions have been the norm in Austria, with the exceptions of the periods 1966-1986 and 2000-2006. This Austrian ‘tradition’ allowed the two main ideological Lagers in the Austrian electorate tobe reconciled in one government: one Lager having a left-oriented mentality and the second Lager beingcharacterised by an orientation towards the right. Even though decreases in the SPÖ and ÖVP vote shares suggestthat Austrian voters are not supportive of the performance of the two government parties since the last election, it isstill striking to see that nevertheless a majority of Austrian voters consider the grand-coalition between the SPÖ andthe ÖVP the most preferable one to run the country after the election in September. All other coalitions are lookedupon more sceptically. One has to conclude that the relationship of Austrian citizens with the grand-coalition can atbest be described as ambivalent: on the one hand, it is the most preferred coalition form; on the other hand, itsymbolises ‘old politics’, little transparency and no new impetus from new parties and individuals resulting in lowervote shares for the two mainstream parties.2/3Considering the pre-election polls at this stage it is difficult to make clear forecasts on the composition of the futureAustrian government. While a new edition of a grand-coalition seems rather likely, it is far from certain. The electoralstrengths of the FPÖ, Greens and Team Stronach might prevent the SPÖ and ÖVP from gaining more than 50 percent of the vote share. However, on the other hand, the three competitors with whom other two-party coalitions couldbe built are not very likely to obtain enough votes to be able to act as a junior coalition partner to any of the twomainstream parties either. Hence, the possibility of a three-party coalition government must also be taken intoaccount.Though coalitions including more than two parties have been rare in Austria, current regional elections have shownthat such coalition agreements have started to be a viable alternative at the regional level. At the national level themost viable three-party coalition would include SPÖ-ÖVP and the Greens. All other three-party constellations arerather unlikely to happen: the Greens are unlikely to cooperate with the FPÖ and Team Stronach, and the SPÖ hasalready excluded any coalition with the FPÖ. Less clear are the plans of the ÖVP. Building a coalition with the FPÖand Team Stronach would put the ÖVP in the driving seat and allow them to nominate the Chancellor – an openlydeclared goal by the ÖVP Vice-Chancellor Michael Spindelegger. After the rather unfortunate coalition with the FPÖbetween 2000 and 2006 it is doubtful, however, as to whether the ÖVP would again start such an uncertainexperiment.To conclude, an interesting electoral campaign can be expected in the next two months in Austria: first, the twomainstream parties need to mobilise their voters to turn out to vote; second, all parties will campaign heavily for thelarge portion of undecided voters; third, statements about potential coalitions will dominate the news media. And ifwe follow the famous Karl Kraus who stated that in Vienna everything takes a bit longer than anywhere else in theworld, stability might once again characterise the Austrian electoral outcome, with a grand-coalition continuing togovern Austria.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1en7oKi _________________________________About the authorSylvia Kritzinger – University of ViennaProfessor Sylvia Kritzinger is Head of the Department of Methods in the Social Sciences at theUniversity of Vienna. She is also one of the principle investigators of the Austrian National ElectionStudy (AUTNES).3/3

Despite turmoil in the Austrian party system, the country might once again be heading for another grand coalition in September’s elections.

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