Yesterday, on 15 October 2020, local authorities in the Austrian capital of Vienna revealed the tally for the provisional results from last week’s local elections. The count will officially conclude on 20 October but the figures available right now are enough for politicians to get to work on assembling a new coalition.
No news is good news
In our earlier piece on Vienna’s local elections, we made the claim that, based on polling data, the currently governing red-green coalition between the Austrian Social Democrats and the Green will remain in place. Now, with official results finally available we can say that with yet another degree of certainty.
As of the time of writing of this article, the results are as follows:
- SPÖ: 301.967 Votes (41,62 %)
- FPÖ: 51.603 Votes (7,11 %)
- GRÜNE: 107.397 Votes (14,80 %)
- ÖVP: 148.238 Votes (20,43 %)
- NEOS: 54.173 Votes (7,47 %)
These numbers equate to the following changes in term of mandates – the SPÖ gained a total of 46 (+2 compared to the last electoral cycle), the far-right FPÖ lost 26 seats, ending up with a total of 8, the Greens will hold 6 additional seats, putting them at 16, the centre-right ÖVP made great gains, ending up with 22 mandates and NEOS nearly doubled its share, coming away with 8.
The results point to a clear conclusion. With both parties in the governing coalition increasing their vote shares, it seems that citizens are happy with the job that they’ve been doing. Thus, we can safely expect for them to continue their joint work into the future.
Nonetheless, incumbent mayor Michael Ludwig has stated that he will go into consultations with all parties and that by mid-November, he expects that a coalition agreement can be finalized. “It is my goal in the exploratory talks to find out with which party there is the most content-related overlap in order to achieve a program for the future of the people in Vienna. Then deep coalition negotiations should begin very soon,” explained Ludwig.
On their part, the Greens also see these results as a clear sign that the current coalition should continue with its mandate. As explained during yesterday’s press conference, they will have no demands or conditions on Mayor Michael Ludwig in the run-up to the exploratory negotiations.
Source: TheMayor.EU
