The Vienna municipal elections on Sunday have been counted out. With the evaluation of 321,056 voting cards, the percentage of votes has changed significantly since Sunday. Almost 44 percent of the votes were cast by postal vote. The electoral authorities have now also announced the mandates achieved: The SPÖ is represented in the new municipal council with 46 mandates, the ÖVP with 22, the Greens with 16, NEOS and FPÖ with eight each. In the end, the FPÖ now only ranks behind NEOS. The final result of the election becomes official on October 20 with the meeting of the municipal election authorities.
The number of postal votes that the district electoral authorities had to count on Monday and Tuesday was greater than ever: Almost 44 percent of the votes were cast by mail or even before October 11 at the district office. 317,091 valid votes were added to Sunday’s ballot box results – and changed some things.
ÖVP triples members of parliament
Overall, the ÖVP and the Greens performed strongly among letter voters. The ÖVP finally managed to get just over the 20 percent mark, with 20.43 percent, an increase of 11.19 percentage points. The number of its members of parliament has more than tripled, from seven to 22.
Strongest result for Greens
In the end, the Greens finally came out with their best result ever in Vienna – 14.80 percent (+2.96) – and now have six more local councillors (previously 10). They are now the third strongest force, instead of the collapsed FPÖ.
The SPÖ defended its unchallenged first place – and expanded it by 2.03 percentage points to 41.62 percent, as did the number of seats from 44 to 46. In contrast to previous years, however, it fared significantly worse with the postal voters, with 43.09 percent of the ballot box voters.
NEOS was also among the winners, increasing its percentage to 7.47 percent (+1.31) and its number of seats from five to eight.
FPÖ loses city vice-post
This time the losers of the elections found themselves in the “third camp” – as successful as it was in 2015: the FPÖ collapsed from the record level of 30.79 percent to only 7.11 percent as a result of Ibiza and the expenses affair. 26 of its 34 mandataries have to resign – and also from the post of deputy mayor.
Ex-FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache has failed: His new party, Liste HC Strache, remained far below the five percent hurdle with 3.27 percent. Both FPÖ and HC performed strongly below average among the postal voters, their overall results were even worse than in the polls announced on Sunday.
Voter turnout at just over 65 percent
Naturally, voter turnout increased with the postal voters – to 65.27 percent. That still means a sharp drop of 9.48 percentage points. On the one hand, this was due to the Corona pandemic and on the other hand to the fact that many former FPÖ voters stayed away from the polls.
— Hector Pascua, Source: vienna.at and krone.at. Pictures: krone.at
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