Austria elects a new National Council today

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Austria elects a new National Council! The first of the 9889 polling stations has been open since 6 a.m. Voting closes at 5 p.m. at the latest.
6,346,059 people are eligible to vote, 62,706 of them living abroad. 1,436,240 polling cards were issued—more than ever before.
Nine parties are running across Austria: ÖVP, SPÖ, FPÖ, Grüne, NEOS, Bierpartei, KPÖ, Liste Madeleine Petrovic and “None of them.”
Although the election results are not expected until late in the evening or during the night, the country will have a picture of the outcome shortly after the polls close at 5 p.m. This is when the first projections will be published, which will already include a forecast of the (numerous) postal votes.

Nine parties are on the ballot across Austria, with even more in individual federal states. In 2019, the ÖVP was clearly in first place with 37.46% (at the time under former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz). For this year, the polls are predicting significant losses for the party now led by Chancellor Karl Nehammer and more likely second place behind the FPÖ, but the People’s Party is still hoping to defend its first place.

According to opinion pollsters, the Freedom Party can expect significant growth, which is why party leader Herbert Kickl is clearly aiming for first place and the chancellorship. In 2019, the Ibiza scandal involving former party leader Heinz-Christian Strache resulted in a bitter defeat: The Freedom Party slumped by 9.79 percentage points and ended up with 16.17%.
For the SPÖ, the question is whether the change of leadership to party leader Andreas Babler in June 2023 will bring the hoped-for turnaround. In the 2019 election, the Social Democrats suffered their record negative result of 21.18% (a drop of 5.68 percentage points). Surveys suggest a slightly better result than in 2019.

The Greens will probably not be able to maintain their record result from 2019 (13.9 percent/+10.1); according to the polls, they are likely to compete with the NEOS for fourth place with values of around nine percent, although the pollsters see the Liberals as having the advantage. However, the NEOS will probably make gains compared to their 8.10 percent in 2019.

The Beer Party, the Madeleine Petrovic list, the KPÖ, and the “None of them” list are also on the ballot throughout Austria.
The decisive factor—and for the question of possible coalition majorities—could be whether or not one of the small parties makes it into the National Council. For a long time during the election campaign, the Beer Party, in particular, was considered to have a chance of doing so, but polls have been showing a downward trend for weeks. If none of the “small” parties make it into the National Council, but together they still achieve around seven percent or more, the seats will become “cheaper” for the larger parties. The result would be that, in addition to the fairly secure joint majority of the FPÖ and ÖVP, a narrow majority for a coalition between the ÖVP and SPÖ could emerge. According to election researchers, 45 or 46 percent of the votes could be enough for this.

According to the electoral authority, it is very difficult to predict when the provisional final result will be available. Thanks to the 2023 electoral law reform, the majority of postal votes in the National Council election will be counted on Sunday for the first time, which will probably mean that the count will take longer. The Ministry of the Interior is quite certain that the overall result will not be available before 11 p.m. instead of around 9 p.m. as usual.

In addition, the number of polling cards to be counted will be very high this time: 1,436,240 absentee ballots were issued, which is a new record. There were 1,070,933 cards in the National Council election in 2019 and 958,948 in the EU election this June.

Nevertheless, projections (including postal vote forecasts) will paint a fairly accurate picture of the outcome of the election shortly after the nationwide polls close at 5 pm. However, these could show a somewhat greater fluctuation margin (of around 2 percentage points) than in previous elections, estimates Christoph Hofinger, head of the Foresight Institute, which carries out the projections for ORF and APA. Some questions may remain unanswered at this stage, such as the positions of the parties or the question of whether or not one of the small lists will clear the four-percent hurdle to enter the National Council.

The remaining postal votes (only around 15 percent of the cards issued) will then be counted on Monday and Thursday, but these will change the result significantly less than in previous years. This also makes the postal vote forecast easier: once all municipalities have been counted on Sunday evening, the projection will probably only show a fluctuation margin of around 0.4 percentage points.